SpaceX continued a rapid launch cadence, delivering another batch of 60 Starlink Internet satellites to orbit the Earth early Thursday after a seemingly flawless launch from Cape Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.
Then the nine Merlin 1D main engines of the Falcon 9 rocket came to life and the 22-foot (70-meter) launcher climbed away from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 3:13:29 a.m. EST (0813: 29 GMT Thursday, the start of SpaceX’s seventh mission of the year from Florida’s Space Coast.
The nine main engines steered the Falcon 9 rocket on a course northeast of the Florida coast. The missile dropped its first stage booster and charge shroud in the first few minutes of the flight, then the top stage of Falcon 9 flew up the east coast before reaching a temporary parking lane.
The 15-story first leg descended to a football field landing the size of the SpaceX drone ship “Just Read the Instructions”, parked in the Atlantic Ocean a few hundred miles east of Charleston, South Carolina. The successful landing ended the reusable booster’s sixth journey to space and back since its debut on SpaceX’s first astronaut launch last year.
Two salvage ships were also stationed in the Atlantic Ocean to retrieve both halves of the Falcon 9’s cargo bay.
After flying halfway around the world, the Falcon 9’s second stage re-lit its engine to inject the 60 Starlink satellites into orbit for deployment. The missile shot up to release the satellites all at once at 4:18 a.m. EST (0918 GMT) while sailing at an altitude of 180 miles (291 kilometers) just south of New Zealand.
SpaceX officials confirmed that the Falcon 9 rocket had put the Starlink satellites into orbit, concluding the company’s 110th Falcon 9 launch since 2010, and the 94th consecutive successful flight by the Falcon family of rockets. SpaceX.
With Thursday’s launch, SpaceX has dedicated 21 of those Falcon 9 missions to carrying satellites for the company’s Starlink Internet network. The 60 new Starlinks launched on Thursday bring the total number of Starlink satellites launched to date to 1,265 spacecraft, including prototype platforms not designed for operational service.
According to a catalog maintained by Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and widely respected space activity tracker, more than 1,100 of the Starlink satellites appear to be functioning.
The Starlink network could eventually number more than 10,000 satellites, but the first tranche of Starlinks will have 1,584 satellites orbiting 550 kilometers above Earth on paths tilted 53 degrees to the equator. SpaceX has Federal Communications Commission approval for approximately 12,000 Starlink satellites at various altitudes and slopes, all within a few hundred miles of the planet. The low altitude allows the satellites to provide high-speed, low-latency connectivity to customers, and helps ensure that the spacecraft naturally enters the atmosphere faster than if they were to fly further from Earth.
Starlink already offers intermediate beta services in high latitude regions such as the northern United States, Canada and England. More Starlink launches this year will allow for wider coverage.
SpaceX announced earlier this week that Starlink’s beta service will soon reach customers in Germany, New Zealand and other regions of the UK, including Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Northern England. Those areas could receive beta service in “the coming weeks,” SpaceX said.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has just launched 60 additional Starlink Internet satellites into orbit at an altitude of 180 miles just south of New Zealand.
With this mission, SpaceX has launched 1,265 Starlink satellites so far and 310 since the beginning of the year. Https://t.co/eSwr3GY0Jy pic.twitter.com/xuZHX2LULp
– Spaceflight now (@SpaceflightNow) March 11, 2021
SpaceX is accepting pre-orders from potential Starlink consumers, who can pay $ 99 to reserve their place in the queue to get Starlink service when it becomes available in their region. For people in the southern United States and other lower latitude regions, that should come by the end of 2021, SpaceX says.
Once confirmed, customers will pay $ 499 for a Starlink antenna and modem, plus $ 50 for shipping and handling, SpaceX says. A subscription costs $ 99 per month.
The Starlink satellites were built by SpaceX in Redmond, Washington, and each spacecraft weighs about a quarter of a ton on takeoff. They are equipped with energy-generating solar-panel wings, kryptonion thrusters for propulsion, and sights to dim their brightness for people on the ground, a limitation added to Starlink satellites last year after astronomers raised concerns that the spacecraft made some telescopic observations would screw up.
Like previous Starlink satellites, the new spacecraft deployed on Thursday will use their propulsion systems to raise their altitude to Starlink’s 341-mile operational orbit to start beaming broadband Ku band signals to consumers.
SpaceX is building on the production of ground terminals, routers and other equipment for shipment to Starlink customers. A job posting posted online last week suggested SpaceX is planning a manufacturing center in Austin, Texas, to produce consumer-facing Starlink hardware.
The company filed a request with the FCC on Friday for approval to deploy end-user stations it calls “Earth Stations in Motion” or ESIMs. The mobile terminals would be mounted on land vehicles, ships and aircraft, SpaceX said in the filing.
The mobile stations are “electrically identical” to the $ 499 terminals already authorized by the FCC for landline users. The federal regulator previously licensed SpaceX to use up to a million end-user earth stations designed for homes, businesses, schools, hospitals and other types of customers.
The Starlink terminals designed for mobility have “mounts that allow them to be installed on vehicles, vessels and aircraft,” SpaceX wrote in its filing with the FCC. The terminals will communicate with Starlink satellites visible above 25 degrees in the sky.
Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, tweeted on Monday that the mobile terminals will not be used in smaller vehicles, such as Tesla cars, because “our terminal is far too big”.
“This is for planes, ships, big trucks and RVs,” Musk tweeted.
SpaceX has at least two more Starlink missions planned for the end of March, and possibly more.
The next Falcon 9 rocket launch is scheduled for no earlier than 5:44 AM EDT (0944 GMT) Sunday from pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center, a few miles north of pad 40, the departure point for the Falcon 9 launch on Thursday morning. The Falcon 9 mission Sunday will also deploy a series of Starlink satellites in orbit.
Email the author.
Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1