SpaceX launched one of its Falcon 9 rockets for a record 13th time on Sunday morning (July 17) and also managed to land.
A Falcon 9 carrying 53 from SpaceX Starlink Internet satellites lifted off at 10:20 a.m. EDT (1420 GMT) Sunday from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
It was the 13th launch for the first stage of this Falcon 9, tying the rocket reuse record that SpaceX set last month and tied just 10 days ago. The booster also helped give SpaceX loft Demo-2 crewed test flight to the International Space Station, the RADARSAT Constellation mission, the SXM-7 communications satellite and nine Starlink missions, SpaceX officials said in mission description (opens in new tab).
Connected: SpaceX’s Starlink megaconstellation launches in photos
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying Starlink satellites blasted off on July 17, 2022 (Image: SpaceX)
And that booster will probably fly again: Just under nine minutes after liftoff, it descended for a vertical landing on SpaceX’s Just Read the Instructions drone ship, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida.
The 53 Starlink satellites deployed from the top of the Falcon 9 about seven minutes later, 15.5 minutes after liftoff, according to a tweet (opens in new tab) from the company.
The fairing halves that protect satellites on their journey to orbit made their third flight today, marking SpaceX’s 50th mission reusing fairing halves, according to the company’s mission broadcast. The fairings were also designed to be removed from the water for use on a future mission.
The first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket landed on the Just Read the Instructions unmanned spacecraft in the Atlantic Ocean on July 17, 2022 (Image: SpaceX)
Sunday’s flight continues a very busy 2022 for SpaceX. Today’s flight was the 31st Falcon 9 mission this year, already tying the company’s 2021 launch tally.
Starlink is SpaceX’s vast constellation of broadband satellites. The company has launched more than 2,800 Starlink spacecraft to low Earth orbit so far, and many more are likely to rise in the not-too-distant future: SpaceX has permission to place 12,000 Starlink satellites and has applied for approval to launch 30,000 additional spacecraft on top of that.
Mike Wall is the author of “There (opens in new tab)’ (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Carl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab).
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