A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 20 Starlink craft, including 13 with direct-to-cell capability, lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station tonight at 7:31 p.m. EDT, according toSpace.com.
The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after liftoff as planned, landing on the SpaceX drone ship "Just Read the Instructions" in the Atlantic Ocean. It was the 17th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.
The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, continued hauling the Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit. It will deploy them there about 64 minutes after liftoff, if all goes to plan.
The new batch will join the huge and ever-growing Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of more than 6,400 active spacecraft, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell. About 230 of those satellites are direct-to-cell craft.
SpaceX has launched 96 Falcon 9 missions so far in 2024, two-thirds of them dedicated to building out the Starlink network. The company has also launched two Falcon Heavy missions and three test flights of its Starship megarocket this year.
