On Sunday, March 10, SpaceX launched twenty-three of its Starlink broadband satellites from Florida.
At 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT), a Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Starlink satellite blasted out from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Approximately 8.5 minutes after takeoff, the first stage of the Falcon 9 returned to Earth. The SpaceX droneship “Just Read the Instructions,” which was positioned in the Atlantic Ocean, received it after it performed a vertical landing.
As per the SpaceX mission description, this was the booster’s eleventh launch and landing. Thus far, Starlink missions have comprised four of its ten flights.
About 65 minutes after launch, the rocket’s upper stage was scheduled to place the Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit while it continued to accelerate skyward.
If everything goes according to plan, this was the first of two Starlink launches tonight. On March 11, at 10:13 p.m. EDT (0213 GMT), SpaceX plans to launch a second batch of the broadband satellites from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base.
SpaceX plans to launch 144 times in 2024. The business has already launched 22 orbital flights this year, and many more are in the works.
