Elon Musk’s SpaceX Launches 60 Starlink Internet Satellites Into Orbit
Elon Musk’s SpaceX Launches 60 Starlink Internet Satellites Into Orbit. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched a new batch of 60 Starlink internet satellites into orbit late Monday on the 15th of February 2021. The two stage Falcon 9 rocket took off from the Space Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral Space Force Station as it was carrying 60 space broadband aircraft. The first stage Falcon 9 was on its way back to Earth after approximately 9 minutes after it took off and was on its way to land on SpaceX’s drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean but it missed its target.
“It does look like we did not land our booster on Of Course I Still Love You tonight. It is unfortunate that we did not recover this booster but our second stage is still on a nominal trajectory.” SpaceX manufacturing engineer Jessica Anderson said during live launch commentary.
This is bad for SpaceX as it likes to reuse its rockets once they have successfully landed. SpaceX plans to launch another 60 satellites into space on the 17th of February 2021. This is in efforts of making their vision a reality as they want to make internet accessible all around the world more especially in remote areas.
SpaceX now has more than 1,000 Starlink satellites into orbit and there are many more launches coming that the company is planning; SpaceX’s initial Starlink constellation will consist of 1,440 satellites, and the company has sought approval for tens of thousands more.
According to Space.com, company founder and CEO Elon Musk has said there would need to be between 500-800 Starlink satellites in orbit before coverage could start to roll out. Once that milestone was achieved, the company started testing its new service, reports from employees indicated that the service worked, and even enabled streaming of multiple high definition programs at the same time. Soon after, SpaceX invited users to start testing its service, while continuing to launch more and more satellites.
The company was granted permission to start rolling out its service to users in the U.K. earlier this year. It also managed to get its first Canadian customer for the internet service. SpaceX disclosed in a public filing that its Starlink satellite internet service now has “over 10,000 users in the United States and abroad.”
