Washington. February 3. INTERFAX - The Falcon 9 heavy launch vehicle on Thursday successfully launched into orbit a batch of 49 mini-satellites designed to continue the deployment of the global network of Internet coverage of the Starlink system, the developer company SpaceX reported.
"The withdrawal of 49 Starlink satellites has been confirmed," the report says.
The launch was carried out at 13:13 on the time of the East Coast of the USA (at 21:13 Moscow time) from Launch Complex 39A at the Cape Canaveral Cosmodrome in Florida.
The SpaceX orbital grouping now consists of 2,089 spacecraft weighing 290 kg each. Currently, the company is the largest satellite operator in the world.
Approximately 15.5 minutes after launch, 49 satellites separated from the second stage of the rocket in an elliptical transition orbit up to 340 km high. After the SpaceX engineers have checked their operability, the satellites using their own ion engines will rise to a standard orbit with a height of 540 km.
This was the 37th launch of a group of Internet satellites into orbit since May 2019 as part of the Starlink project. The previous batch of Starlink satellites was launched on January 19.
At the same time, the reusable first stage of the American Falcon 9 launch vehicle, which was used for launches for the 6th time, about nine minutes after launch made a controlled vertical landing on a floating platform-A Shortfall of Gravitas drone, which was located in the Atlantic about 640 km from the cosmodrome.
In addition, special SpaceX rescue vessels had to fish out of the water two wings of the fairing of the rocket head, which after separation descended by parachutes. The reuse of the fairing allows SpaceX to save up to $6 million when launching its rockets.
