Kennedy Space Center, FL - SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 Starlink satellites at sunrise on Monday, marking the company's third launch in less than 46 hours. The successful liftoff came after two days of delay for the Starlink 10-7 mission.
Falcon 9 blasting off to orbit carrying another batch of Starlink satellites Image Credit: SpaceX
The Falcon 9, making its 17th flight, lifted off from pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 6:37 a.m. EDT (1037 UTC), 13 minutes before sunrise on Florida's Space Coast. The rocket's first stage booster, tail number B1073, previously launched the ispace Hakuto-R lunar lander, the Bandwagon-1 rideshare flight, and 11 Starlink missions. It successfully landed on the SpaceX droneship "A Shortfall of Gravitas" about eight and a half minutes after launch.
This launch capped a busy weekend for SpaceX, which saw three launches and two scrubbed countdowns over four days. On Saturday morning, the Starlink 8-3 mission launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, followed by the Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission (ASBM) on Sunday evening from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The Starlink 10-7 mission brings the total number of Starlink satellites launched to 6,895. SpaceX confirmed a successful separation of the 23 Starlink satellites just over an hour after launch.
The weekend's launches demonstrate SpaceX's continued efforts to expand its Starlink constellation and provide global mobile broadband internet. With its rapid launch cadence and reusable rocket technology, SpaceX is pushing the boundaries of space exploration and satellite communications.
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