SpaceX rocket carries 53 satellites into orbit for the Starlink Internet Constellation
SpaceX rocket carries 53 satellites into orbit for the Starlink Internet Constellation
A SpaceX rocket carried 53 satellites for the Starlink internet constellation into orbit on Friday after blasting off from California.
The Falcon 9 booster took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 3.07 p.m. (local time), and minutes later the first stage landed on a droneship in the Pacific Ocean, while the second stage continued toward low Earth orbit.
SpaceX later tweeted that the satellites had been successfully deployed.
Starlink is a space-based system that SpaceX has been building for years to bring Internet access to under-served areas of the world.
Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX has hundreds of Starlink satellites orbiting Earth at an altitude of 340 miles (550 kilometers).