The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that carried the Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station on May 30, 2020, successfully completed its 16th mission Sunday night when it launched 22 Starlink satellites into space from Florida’s Cape Canaveral. File Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA/UPI | License Photo
July 10 (UPI) — SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket with a payload of nearly two dozen Starlink satellites into space late Sunday from Florida’s famed Cape Canaveral.
The rocket topped with 22 Starlink satellites launched at 11:58 p.m. Sunday EDT from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40.
Minutes prior to liftoff, weather conditions were at less than 5% probability of violating launch constraints, which Kate Tice, quality systems engineering manager at SpaceX and host of the mission’s live broadcast, said was “about as good as it gets for Florida launches.”
The mission saw that the Starlink satellites were put into low-Earth orbit where they will join the constellation of more than 4,000 satellites that provide low latency broadband Internet around the globe.
The first-stage booster used in the mission was on what Tice called its “record-breaking” 16th flight, and successfully returned to Earth where it landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship, which had been stationed in waiting in the Atlantic Ocean.
The booster’s first launch was in May 2020, when it flew astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken to the International Space Station as part of the Dragon Demo-2 mission.
Both fairing halves used in Sunday night’s mission were also to be retrieved by Bob, one of two SpaceX recovery ships.
The launch marked SpaceX’s 46th of the year and 245th overall.
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