WATCH | SpaceX launches 21 Starlink satellites after delay, lands rocket at sea

SpaceX confirmed the launch of 21 new Starlink satellites into orbitearly Tuesday (August 22), after a days-long delay due to the impact of Hurricane Hilary. This marks the 15th launch and landing of the Falcon 9 rocket.

About the delayed launch

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Starlink spacecraft was launched from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, United States, on Tuesday at 5:37 am (local time), reported Space.com. This comes after the rocket was originally supposed to launch on early Thursday (August 17) but was delayed due to the impact of Hurricane Hilary on rocket recovery operations.

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“Due to Hurricane Hilary impacting recovery operations in the Pacific, we are standing down from tonight’s Falcon 9 launch of Starlink,” said SpaceX, on X (formerly Twitter), on Thursday.

Storm Hilary, downgraded from a hurricane, flooded streets, downed power lines and triggered mudslides across Southern California on Monday (August 20), after unleashing record-breaking rain overnight.

This was after the hurricane lost strength off the coast of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula before making landfall in the North American mainland.

SpaceX recovers Falcon 9 booster

Typically, SpaceX recovers its Falcon 9 boosters by landing them on a drone ship around eight minutes after the launch.

Similarly, in this case, Falcon 9’s first-stage boosters returned to Earth and landed on the company’s drone ship ‘Of Course I Still Love You’ (OCISLY) about 8.5 minutes after the launch.

OCISLY is a SpaceX autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) that is operated out of the Port of Long Beach, California, which was previously based in Florida from 2015 to 2021.

According to the report, this was SpaceX’s 15th launch and landing for this particular booster just one short of its reuse record held by two different Falcon 9 first stages.

In a later update, SpaceX took to the microblogging platform andsaid "Deployment of 21@Starlink satellites confirmed."

So far, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has launched around 5,000 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO) with the permission to deploy as many as 12,000 Starlink satellites.

(With inputs from agencies)

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