The American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company SpaceX has launched 60 of its Starlink internet satellites into orbit.
The satellites were launched from Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
This was the ninth launch and landing of this Falcon 9 first stage booster, which previously launched Telstar 18 VANTAGE, Iridium-8, and six Starlink missions.
After the mission was done the booster landed back on SpaceX’s floating drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
Out of 13 Falcon 10 have been dedicated to starlink satellites, while the eleventh, the Transporter-1 rideshare mission, carried 10 Starlink satellites, close to 1,500 Starlink satellites are currently in orbit.
SpaceX is continuing to build out its Starlink constellation, backed by a Federal Communications Commission decision April 27 to approve a license modification sought by SpaceX.
That modification will allow SpaceX to operate 2,814 satellites originally planned for orbits between 1,100 and 1,300 kilometers to orbits of 540 to 570 kilometers.
SpaceX has also shared updated figures of its Starlink consumer hardware, which is used to transmit and receive signals from the constellation for broadband service.
The company has received “over half a million” pre-order reservations for its service so far, which includes advance deposits on the hardware.
The service is made available to beta customers in six countries, including Canada, Mexico, the U.K., New Zealand, the U.S. and Australia,
but the goal is to continue to expand coverage to achieve near-global reach by the end of 2021 in terms of service availability, with a number of additional launches planned throughout the rest of the year.
The SpaceX engineer, Siva Bharadvaj, who hosted the webcast said:
“over half a million people have placed an order or put down a deposit for Starlink.”
About starlink
Starlink is a satellite internet constellation being constructed by SpaceX providing satellite Internet access.
The constellation will consist of thousands of mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), working in combination with ground transceivers.
