SpaceX added 23 more satellites to its Starlink internet constellation on Saturday night (Dec. 2). A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the communications satellites lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 11:00 p.m. EST (0400 GMT on Dec. 3).
The Falcon 9’s first stage came back to Earth for a vertical landing about 8.5 minutes after launch. It touched down on the droneship “A Shortfall of Gravitas,” which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast.
It was the sixth launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. The 23 Starlink satellites, meanwhile, were scheduled to deploy from the Falcon 9’s upper stage into low Earth orbit (LEO) about 65.5 minutes after liftoff.
If you can’t see SpaceX’s Starship in person, you can score a model of your own. Standing at 13.77 inches (35 cm), this is a 1:375 ratio of SpaceX’s Starship as a desktop model. The materials here are alloy steel and it weighs just 225g.
Source: Space.com
