Space X rocket launches with 53 Starlink satellites

The SpaceX company launched this Thursday from Cape Canaveral, Florida (USA), a Falcon 9 rocket to carry a new fleet of Starlink communications satellites into space and did so on the twelfth mission of one of its thrusters, establishing a new Mark.

SpaceX launched the 53-satellite Starlink rocket into low-Earth orbit without major incident from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The booster rocket, the reusable part, had previously participated in eight Starlink missions, as well as three other missions to put various satellites into orbit.

Approximately eight and a half minutes after liftoff, this first-stage liftoff booster returned to Earth and landed on a floating platform called “Just Read the Instructions” located in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida.

This type of recovery operation allows SpaceX to reuse the most expensive parts of the rocket, which in turn reduces the cost of access to space, something that allows this initial propellant to be reused again in future missions.

Elon Musk himself, who founded SpaceX in 2002, indicated through his Twitter account just over an hour after liftoff that the Starlink satellites had already been deployed in their initial parking orbit.

The company explains that while most satellite internet services come from satellites orbiting at about 35,000 kilometers, the Starlink swarm is much closer to Earth, at about 550 kilometers, which allows it to reduce the time it takes the data go back and forth between the user and the satellite.

SpaceX has already launched more than 2,300 Starlink satellites to date and its plans include launching up to 30,000 to offer internet coverage to the entire planet.

The next objective of SpaceX, together with the US space agency NASA, is to bring a team of four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on April 26 in the Crew-4 spacecraft from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (I)