A two-stage Falcon 9 rocket carried 46 of SpaceX’s Starlink Internet satellites from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 9:39 p.m. EDT Sunday.
About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, the first stage of the Falcon 9 returned to Earth and landed on SpaceX’s unmanned ship “Of Course I Still Love You”, which is stationed in the Pacific Ocean.
Techgoing learned that this is SpaceX’s 29th orbital launch mission this year, and the 17th dedicated to the Starlink satellite launch. It is reported that this month, there are three more Starlink group of satellites will be launched.
To date, SpaceX has launched more than 2,750 Starlink satellites, and that number will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. The company has been approved to launch 12,000 Starlink satellites and has applied to an international regulatory body to launch an additional 30,000 on top of that.
