On Saturday, June 28, SpaceX, the American space exploration company, consecutively launched two Falcon 9 rockets, sending a total of 53 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit.
The first rocket took off at 12:26 a.m. Eastern Time from the 40th launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The second launch occurred at 1:13 p.m. from the 4th East launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, with only about 13 hours between the two launches.
In a statement on SpaceX’s official social media account, it was announced that the Falcon 9 rockets launched Starlink satellites from Florida and California, marking the 80th and 81st Falcon missions of the year.
This mission added new members to SpaceX’s Starlink mega-constellation, categorized as “Group 10-34” and “Group 15-7”. Both batches of satellites successfully entered their planned orbit about 9 minutes after launch and completed deployment approximately an hour later.
After the main body of the rocket ascended, its first-stage booster was also successfully recovered. The booster B1092 used in the early morning mission landed on the autonomous drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas” in the Atlantic Ocean after its fifth spaceflight, while the booster B1088 from the afternoon mission landed on the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You” in the Pacific Ocean after its eighth round trip.
According to satellite tracking expert Jonathan McDowell, the two launch missions on Saturday each placed 27 and 26 Starlink satellites into orbit, bringing SpaceX’s total operational Starlink satellites to over 7,900. This extensive network will further advance global broadband connectivity, particularly targeting remote areas with high-speed internet coverage.
The day the Starlink satellite missions were launched was also the 54th birthday of SpaceX founder Elon Musk, currently the world’s richest person with a net worth of $409.8 billion according to Forbes.
On Wednesday, June 25, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft lifted off from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard the Falcon 9 rocket for the Axiom-4 mission. Led by an American commercial company, this mission carried astronauts from India, Poland, and Hungary, marking the first time in decades that astronauts from these three countries have ventured into space.
(This article referenced a report from “Science” magazine)