Moscow. September 14th. INTERFAX.RU – Heavy rocket Falcon 9 on Tuesday Moscow time successfully launched a batch of 51 mini-satellites into polar orbit, designed to continue the deployment of the global Internet coverage of the Starlink system, said the developer SpaceX.
“Successful launch of Starlink satellites has been confirmed,” the company tweeted.
The launch was carried out from the US Space Force base in Vandenberg, California at 20:55 on Monday, US West Coast time (on Tuesday at 06:55 Moscow time).
The Falcon 9's reusable first stage has made a successful guided landing on a floating platform in the Pacific Ocean. Vertical landing on the automatic sea platform Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean was carried out 8 minutes 46 seconds after the launch of the rocket. This first stage of the Falcon 9 was used for launches for the tenth time.
This is already the 31st launch of a group of Internet satellites into orbit since May 2019 as part of the Starlink project. SpaceX's orbital constellation now consists of 1,789 spacecraft. The company is currently the largest satellite operator in the world.
In the future, SpaceX plans to deploy an orbital constellation of 12,000 spacecraft of this type (and subsequently 30,000) to create a full-scale network that will provide the inhabitants of the Earth with broadband Internet access anywhere in the world. The total investment in the project is estimated at $ 10 billion.
