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Continuing a rapid launch pace, SpaceX delivered another batch of 60 Starlink Internet satellites to orbit early Thursday after a seemingly flawless takeoff from Cape Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.
Then, the Falcon 9 rocket’s nine Merlin 1D main engines exploded and the 229-foot-tall (70-meter) launcher pulled away from Cape Canaveral Space Station Station 40 at 3:13 a.m. EST ( 8:13:29 a.m. GMT). Thursday is the start of SpaceX’s seventh mission of the year from the Florida Space Coast.
Accelerating to generate 1.7 million pounds of thrust, the nine main engines guided the Falcon 9 rocket on a course northeast of the Florida coast. The rocket threw its first stage booster and payload shroud within the first minutes of flight, then the Falcon 9’s upper stage moved up the East Coast before reaching a preliminary parking orbit.
The 15-story first stage descended to a precise landing on the football-sized deck of the SpaceX “Just Read the Instructions” drone stationed in the Atlantic Ocean a few hundred kilometers to the east. of Charleston, South Carolina. The successful landing ended the reusable booster’s sixth round-trip trip since the launch of SpaceX’s first astronaut launch last year.
Two salvage ships were also stationed in the Atlantic to retrieve the two halves of the Falcon 9 payload fairing.
After flying halfway around the world, Falcon 9’s second stage re-ignited its engine to inject the 60 Starlink satellites into the orbit appropriate for deployment. The rocket rotated to release the satellites at the same time at 4:18 a.m. EST (9:18 a.m. GMT) as it sailed at an altitude of 291 kilometers just south of New Zealand.
SpaceX officials have confirmed that the Falcon 9 rocket has placed the Starlink satellites in a target orbit, concluding the 110th launch of the company’s Falcon 9 since 2010 and the 94th consecutive successful flight of SpaceX’s Falcon family of rockets.
With Thursday’s launch, SpaceX dedicated 21 of those Falcon 9 missions to transporting satellites for the company’s Starlink Internet network. The 60 new Starlinks launched on Thursday bring the total number of Starlink satellites launched to date to 1,265 spacecraft, including prototype platforms not designed for operational service.
More than 1,100 of the Starlink satellites appear to be working, which rules out test spacecraft and failed satellites, according to a catalog maintained by Jonathan McDowell, a widely respected astronomer and tracker of space activity.
The Starlink network could eventually have more than 10,000 satellites, but the first phase of Starlinks will have 1,584 satellites orbiting 550 kilometers above the Earth on trajectories tilted 53 degrees towards the equator. SpaceX has obtained Federal Communications Commission approval for approximately 12,000 Starlink satellites at a range of altitudes and inclinations, all within a few hundred miles of the planet. The low altitude allows satellites to provide customers with high speed, low latency connectivity, and helps ensure that the spacecraft naturally re-enters the atmosphere faster than if it were flying further from Earth.
Starlink already provides interim beta service in high latitude regions, such as the northern United States, Canada, and England. Further Starlink launches this year will expand the coverage area.
SpaceX announced earlier in the week that Starlink’s beta service will soon begin reaching customers in Germany, New Zealand and other parts of the UK, including Wales, Scotland, Ireland. North and North of England. These areas could receive beta service in the “next few weeks,” SpaceX said.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has just deployed 60 more Starlink Internet satellites to orbit at an altitude of 180 miles just south of New Zealand.
With this mission, SpaceX has launched 1,265 Starlink satellites to date, and 310 so far this year. pic.twitter.com/xuZHX2LULp
– Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) March 11, 2021
SpaceX is accepting pre-orders from prospective Starlink consumers, who can pay $ 99 to reserve their seat online to get Starlink service when it becomes available in their region. For people living in the southern United States and other low-latitude areas, it should happen by the end of 2021, SpaceX says.
Once confirmed, customers will pay $ 499 for a Starlink antenna and modem, plus $ 50 in shipping and handling, SpaceX says. A subscription will cost $ 99 per month.
Starlink satellites are built by SpaceX in Redmond, Washington, and each spacecraft weighs about a quarter of a ton on takeoff. They are fitted with wings of energy-generating solar panels, krypton ion thrusters for propulsion, and visors to dim their brightness to people on the ground, an attenuation added to Starlink satellites last year after astronomers raised concerns that the spacecraft would ruin some telescopic sightings.
Like previous Starlink satellites, the new spacecraft deployed on Thursday will use its propulsion systems to raise its altitude to the 341-mile-high Starlink operational orbit to begin transmitting broadband Ku-band signals to consumers.
SpaceX is expanding production of ground terminals, routers and other equipment for shipment to Starlink customers. A job posting posted online last week suggested SpaceX was planning a manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas, to produce Starlink hardware for consumers.
The company filed with the FCC on Friday for approval to deploy end-user stations that it calls “moving earth stations,” or ESIMs. The mobile terminals are said to be mounted on land vehicles, ships and airplanes, SpaceX said in the filing.
Mobile stations are “electrically identical” to the $ 499 terminals already authorized by the FCC for fixed consumers. The federal regulator previously issued a license for SpaceX to line up up to one million end-user earth stations designed for homes, businesses, schools, hospitals and other types of customers.
Starlink terminals designed for mobility have “brackets that allow them to be installed on vehicles, ships and aircraft,” SpaceX wrote in the filing with the FCC. The terminals will communicate with Starlink satellites visible above a 25 degree elevation in the sky.
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, tweeted Monday that mobile devices will not be used in smaller vehicles, such as Tesla cars, because “our terminal is way too big”.
“It’s for airplanes, ships, big trucks, and RVs,” Musk tweeted.
SpaceX has at least two more Starlink missions slated to launch before the end of March, and possibly more.
The next Falcon 9 rocket launch is scheduled for no earlier than 5:44 a.m. EDT (9:44 a.m. GMT) Sunday from Station 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, a few miles north of Station 40, the departure point of the launch of the Falcon 9 Thursday morning. The Falcon 9 mission on Sunday will also deploy a batch of Starlink satellites into orbit.
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.
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