SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying another 60 Starlink satellites into orbit last Thursday, boosting the total number launched to date to 713 in a fast-growing constellation of internet relay stations.
The company’s fleet of flight-proven boosters has been busy this summer, with the California-based rocket builder reaching a new milestone on its previous Starlink flight: launching and landing the same first-stage booster six times.
According to cbsnews, Generating 1.7 million pounds of thrust, the nine Merlin engines powering the previously flown first stage boosted the rocket out of the thick lower atmosphere.
The stage then separated and headed for landing on an off-shore droneship, touching down on the "Of Course I Still Love You" about eight minutes and 20 seconds after liftoff.
The company is testing inter-satellite laser links designed to enable data relay from one Starlink to another, providing seamless service as satellites pass over a user's location.
StarLink is a typically audacious project from Elon Musk's SpaceX, and it stands to benefit anyone who currently has an unsatisfactory internet service — or perhaps no service at all. Whether you're on a remote island or mountaintop, an Antarctic base or congested city.
SpaceX
Later, SpaceX’s Starship will be the first passenger that will go on a voyage towards the moon in 2023. It will be the first lunar journey by humans since 1972. Starship will not land on the lunar surface, instead, the craft will fly on a circumlunar around the moon traveling 238,900 miles away from Earth.
SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk, is working around-the-clock towards enabling humans to become multi-planetary.
Engineers are in the initial phase of developing Starship, a massive stainless-steel, spaceship-rocket duo that will one day be capable of transporting one hundred passengers to the moon, Mars, and beyond.
SpaceX teams are currently developing Starship in South Texas at a facility located in a small village called Boca Chica Beach. Engineers are manufacturing multiple stainless-steel prototypes of the craft, which are undergoing testing one after the other. Earlier this month, a first large-scale prototype of Starship, dubbed SN5, conducted a low-altitude test flight of 150-meters.
SpaceX Starlink Satellite
SN5’s successful flight showcased SpaceX’s engineers’ ability to develop a spacecraft that can launch and land flawlessly powered by a single Raptor engine.
Now, teams are preparing to test out the next Starship in line, SN6, which will fly on a similar trajectory, before taking a full-scale Starship on higher-altitude, 20 to 100 kilometer test flights. SN6 could take flight as soon as next week. Each test flight takes the company closer towards launching a Starship to orbit.
Last month, american astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurleyl splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, after a two-month trip to the International Space Station in SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon.
This was the first mission by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration “NASA” from the United States in nine years, Reuters reported.
“The hardest part was getting us launched, but the most important thing is to bring us home,” said Behnken.
“Thanks for doing the most difficult parts and the most important parts of human spaceflight – getting us into orbit and bringing us home,” Behnken told SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California, as the hatch door was opened.
Hurley said, “I’m just proud to be a small part of this whole effort to get a company and people to and from the space station.”
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