Aerospace company SpaceX continues to expand its experience in reusing the first stages of Falcon 9 launch vehicles. The latest launch of the rocket with 21 Starlink Internet satellites, 13 of which are also designed to provide cellular communications, was carried out from Cape Canaveral in Florida on January 10 at 14:11 local time (22:11 Moscow time). This launch was the 25th for the Falcon 9 first stage, a new record-breaking achievement.
Image source: Spacex
About eight minutes after liftoff, the first stage of Falcon 9 landed in the Atlantic Ocean on a special floating platform called Just Read the Instruction. At the same time, the second stage continued to move in the given direction and approximately 65 minutes after launch, a batch of Starlink telecommunications satellites was deployed into low Earth orbit.
Starlink is currently the largest satellite constellation ever deployed in low Earth orbit. At the same time, SpaceX continues to actively expand it, regularly delivering new batches of satellites into outer space. According to the source, the Starlink constellation currently includes more than 6,870 telecommunications devices, of which about 400 can also be used to provide cellular communications.