SpaceX launches Falcon 9 with 52 Starlink satellites, what’s Musk’s motive?
falcon 9
Elon Musk’s SpaceX carried out another big launch of a batch of Starlink internet satellites to orbit and landed a rocket on a ship at sea on Tuesday at 7:44 am IST on Wednesday (August 10), days after experiencing weather-related delays.
The Falcon 9 rocket carried 52 Starlink spacecraft, which were launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. According to SpaceX, the first stage booster for the mission has already launched SES-22 and one Starlink mission.
A little under nine minutes after the launch, Falcon 9’s first stage returned to the Earth for a vertical landing on the SpaceX droneship in Florida. SpaceX tweeted that roughly 15 minutes after lift-off, the Falcon 9 upper stage finished accelerating toward lower Earth orbit and successfully deployed the Starlink satellites as intended, Space.com reported.
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But what exactly is Falcon 9?
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage rocket that can carry passengers and payloads reliably and safely into Earth orbit and beyond. The first reusable rocket of orbital class is called Falcon 9.
SpaceX places a high premium on rocket reuse because it considers it a technological advance that will make Mars colonisation possible.
Starlink, on the other hand, is SpaceX’s internet mega constellation that broadcasts broadband service to tens of thousands of users all over the world. As of now, nearly 3,000 Starlink satellites have already been launched by Elon Musk, and many more are yet to be launched. Currently, the space agency has permission to launch 12,000 satellites but has further requested authorisation to exceed that figure by 30,000.
This agency’s launch was its 35th orbital flight of the year overall and its 21st Starlink mission of 2022, breaking its prior records.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX aerospace agency has been launching hundreds of satellites into orbit as a part of its ‘Starlink’ initiative, aiming to bring high-speed internet access to particularly inaccessible locations. In order to speed up the connection between satellites, Starlink’s satellites were placed in low-level orbits around Earth.
(With inputs from agencies)
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