ONE Hawk 9 carrying 53 from SpaceX Starlink Internet satellites lifted off at 10:20 am. EDT (1420 GMT) on Sunday from the Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida. It was the 13th launch for this Falcon 9’s first stage, breaking a rocket reuse record set by SpaceX last month that was set just 10 days ago. The booster also helped in the SpaceX loft Demo-2 test flight crew on the International Space Station, the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, the SXM-7 communications satellite and nine Starlink missions, SpaceX officials said in a mission description (opens in a new tab).
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying Starlink satellites blasted off on July 17, 2022. (Image credit: SpaceX) And that booster will likely fly again: Just under nine minutes after liftoff, it descended for a vertical landing on the SpaceX Just Read the Instructions unmanned craft, which was in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida. The 53 Starlink satellites deployed from the Falcon 9 upper stage about seven minutes later, 15.5 minutes after liftoff, according to a tweet (opens in new tab) from the company. The half-fairings that protect the satellites during their ride into orbit made their third flight today, marking SpaceX’s 50th mission to use half-fairings, according to the company’s mission broadcast. The fairings were also intended to be fished out of the water for use on a future expedition.
The first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket landed on the Just Read the Instructions unmanned ship in the Atlantic Ocean on July 17, 2022. (Image credit: 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 massive constellation of broadband satellites. The company has launched more than 2,800 Starlink spacecraft in low Earth orbit to date, and many more will likely go up in the not-too-distant future: SpaceX is licensed to place 12,000 Starlink satellites and has applied for approval to launch an additional 30,000 spacecraft in addition. Mike Wall is the author of “Out there (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018, illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or enabled Facebook (opens in a new tab).
