SpaceX Saturday expanded its group of low-Earth orbit satellites with the launch of 53 Starlink satellites from Florida.
A Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:19 a.m. EST and deployed the satellites about 16 minutes after launch.
The rocket’s reusable first stage, which has been used for several launches, including the first crewed test flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, successfully returned and landed on the “Just Read the Instruction” droneship in the Atlantic Ocean.
Starlink is a satellite-based global Internet system that SpaceX has been building for years to bring Internet access to underserved areas of the world.
Earlier this week, SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space Station, including the 600th person to reach space in 60 years.
It took 21 hours to fly from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to the gleaming outpost.
Astronauts became emotional when they first saw the space station 20 miles (32 kilometers) out, calling it “a very spectacular sight.”
The crew was welcomed by three astronauts instead of the preferred seven.
That’s because SpaceX brought back four of them on Monday, as the launch of their replacements continued to be delayed.
The new crew will spend the next six months on the space station and will host two groups of visiting tourists during that time.
Russia will launch the first group in December and SpaceX the second in February.
This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed.
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