The first half of SpaceX’s St. Patrick’s Day doubleheader has gone well.
The company carried out its 18th orbital mission of 2023 on Friday March 17, launching 52 of its Stellar Link internet satellites in orbit and landing a rocket on a ship at sea.
A Falcon 9 the rocket carrying the broadband craft lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 3:26 p.m. EDT (1926 GMT; 12:26 p.m. local California time).
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Just under nine minutes later, Falcon 9’s first stage returned to Earth for a precise landing on the SpaceX droneship Of Course I Still Love You, which was stationed in the Pacific Ocean. This was the eighth mission for this particular booster, SpaceX written in a job description (opens in a new tab).
The rocket’s upper stage, meanwhile, continued to carry the Starlink spacecraft into low Earth orbit, deploying them all as planned about 15.5 minutes after liftoff, SpaceX confirmed via Twitter (opens in a new tab).
Newly launched satellites join more than 3,700 operational spacecraft (opens in a new tab) in SpaceX’s Starlink megaconstellation. And that number will continue to grow in the future: SpaceX has permission to deploy 12,000 Starlink satellites and has requested permission for another 30,000 on top of that.
SpaceX has another mission on tap today: Another Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch the SES-18 and SES-19 communications satellites into orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:38 p.m. EDT (23:38 GMT).
You can watch it here on Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly through the company (opens in a new tab). Coverage should begin approximately 15 minutes before takeoff.
Mike Wall is the author of “Over there (opens in a new tab)(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in a new tab). Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) Or on Facebook (opens in a new tab).