A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off for a record 12th time on Thursday (April 21st) – and also made its 12th landing.
The two-stage Falcon 9 launches Thursday at 13:51 EDT (1751 GMT) from the Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida, carrying 53 from SpaceX Starlink internet satellites in orbit.
This was the 12th take-off for this particular first phase of Falcon 9, which set a record for re-using SpaceX set only last month when starting Starlink differently. And it probably won’t be the last flight of this booster; about 8.5 minutes after takeoff, he landed to land the SpaceX drone safely. Just read the instructions, which was located in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida.
Meanwhile, the second stage of the Falcon 9 continued to transport the Starlink spacecraft into orbit. If all goes according to plan, all 53 satellites will be deployed within an hour of launch.
Related: SpaceX’s Starlink megastar launches in photos
The first stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket goes down to land the drone Just read the instructions on April 21, 2022. This was the 12th landing for this booster. (Image credit: SpaceX)
The mega-constellation Starlink provides Internet services to customers around the world, including Ukraine. In fact, SpaceX, in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development, sent thousands of Starlink terminals to Ukraine to help the nation maintain its communication skills, which have been deteriorated by the ongoing Russian invasion.
SpaceX starts more than 2,300 Starlink satellites to date, but plans to raise much more. The next-generation version of the mega-constellation may consist of up to 30,000 spacecraftaccording to the documents submitted by the company.
And Starlink satellites have been rising fast lately; nine of the 15 missions SpaceX has launched so far this year are dedicated to Starlink flights.
Another of those 15 was a flight with a crew – the launch on April 8 Mission Ax-1who sent four private astronauts to the International Space Station. And SpaceX has another flight with a crew coming soon – the Crew-4 mission to NASA, which will send four professional space pilots to the long-stay orbital laboratory.
Crew-4 it is currently scheduled to take off no earlier than April 26. That date was recently postponed by several days due to bad weather in the Axis 1’s planned deployment zone, which necessitated the mission’s planned departure from the station from Tuesday (April 19th) to Saturday (April 23rd). NASA officials say they want at least a two-day interval between the launch of the Ax-1 and the launch of the Crew-4.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Carl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow it on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook.
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