Washington. April 29. INTERFAX-The Falcon 9 heavy launch vehicle on Thursday successfully launched another batch of 60 mini-satellites into low-Earth orbit, designed to continue the deployment of the global Internet coverage of the Starlink system, the developer company SpaceX said.
"The withdrawal of the Starlink satellites has been confirmed," the statement said.
This is the 25th launch of a group of Internet satellites since May 2019 as part of the Starlink project. Taking into account the current satellites, the SpaceX orbital constellation already consists of 1503 spacecraft. The company is the largest satellite operator in the world. The previous batch of 60 Starlink satellites was launched on April 7.
The launch was carried out on Wednesday 23: 44 East Coast time (Thursday at 06: 44 Moscow time) from the 40th launch complex of the Kennedy Space Center (Florida).
Approximately 1 hour and 5 minutes after the launch of the rocket, a group of Starlink satellites was launched into the specified orbit.
Meanwhile, the first reusable stage of the SpaceX launch vehicle, which was used for the launch for the seventh time, 8 minutes 37 seconds after launch, made a controlled vertical landing on the Just Read the Instructions automatic floating platform, which was located in the Atlantic about 630 km from the Cape Canaveral spaceport.
In addition, special rescue sea vessels had to fish out of the water two wings of the fairing of the head of the rocket, which after separation descended by parachute. Reusing the fairing saves SpaceX up to $6 million on its rocket launches.
The company is currently the largest satellite operator in the world.
