The first half went well for St. SpaceX’s Patrick’s Day doubleheader.
The company succeeded in its 18th orbital mission of 2023 on Friday (March 17), launching 52 of Starlink internet satellite to orbit and land a rocket on a ship at sea.
A Falcon 9 the rocket carrying the broadband craft lifted off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base at 3:26 pm EDT (1926 GMT; 12:26 pm local California time).
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Less than nine minutes later, the Falcon 9’s first stage returned to Earth for a pinpoint touchdown on SpaceX droneship Of Course I Still Love You, stationed in the Pacific Ocean. This is the eighth mission for this particular booster, SpaceX written in a mission description (opens in new tab).
The rocket’s upper stage, meanwhile, continued to haul the Starlink spacecraft into low Earth orbit, deploying them all as planned about 15.5 minutes after liftoff, SpaceX confirmed via Twitter (opens in new tab).
Newly launched satellites are joining more than 3,700 operational spacecraft (opens in new tab) in SpaceX’s Starlink megaconstellation. And that number will continue to grow into the future: SpaceX has approval to deploy 12,000 Starlink satellites and has applied for permission for another 30,000 on top of that.
SpaceX has another mission on tap today: Another Falcon 9 is set to launch the SES-18 and SES-19 telecommunications satellites to orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:38 pm EDT (2338 GMT).
You can watch it here on Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly through the company (opens in new tab). Coverage is expected to begin about 15 minutes before departure.
Mike Wall is the author of “There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or to Facebook (opens in new tab).