Washington. March 14. INTERFAX-The reusable first stage of the American Falcon 9 launch vehicle, launched on Sunday into orbit with 60 Internet satellites of the Starlink project, made a successful controlled landing on a floating platform in the Atlantic, the developer company SpaceX said.
The vertical landing on the automatic marine platform Of Course I Still Love You in the Atlantic was carried out 8 minutes 26 seconds after the launch of the rocket. The platform was located about 630 km from the Cape Canaveral spaceport.
This first reusable stage of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle was used for launches for the ninth time.
The Falcon 9 heavy launch vehicle with satellites designed to continue the deployment of SpaceX's global Internet coverage of the Starlink system was launched at 06: 01 East Coast time (13: 01 Moscow time) from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Cape Canaveral space Center in Florida.
This is the 22nd launch of a group of Internet satellites since May last year as part of the Starlink project. The previous batch of 60 Starlink satellites was launched on March 11. Taking into account the current satellites, the SpaceX orbital constellation will consist of 1,323 Starlink spacecraft.
