Internet is a fundamental right, and no one understands this better than ‘Technoking of Tesla’-Elon Musk. That is why, the eccentric billionaire has been working tirelessly towards his goal of providing high speed, low latency internet to everyone in the world using a constellation of internet providing satellites placed in low Earth orbit. This mission, termed ‘Starlink’, has been going smoothly for more than over an year, and today, SpaceX completed another launch as part of this endeavor.
The space company successfully launched another batch of 60 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit, adding to the 1000+ satellites that are already there.
The launch took place from Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which has become SpaceX’s lucky spot. The company has been using this launch site for Starlink launches for quite some time now, and thankfully, all of them have been successful so far.
The company has also perfected the art of reusing boosters over the numerous Starlink launches. Today’s Falcon 9 rocket had been used during the launch of Telstar 18 VANTAGE, Iridium-8, and six Starlink missions. Moreover, it will probably be used for some more, after its successful landing on the ‘Of Couse I Still Love You’ drone ship in the Atlantic ocean.
Moreover, one of the fairing halves on this Falcon 9 rocket was used during two Starlink launches previously.
Over time, the company has also significantly reduced the turn around time on its rockets, and thus, it’s doing launches much more frequently than before. In fact, the last Starlink launch happened just a few days ago, on April 29th.
The reason SpaceX is intensely increasing launches is because it’s aiming to start providing internet services in a lot of countries in 2022 (including India as well). The company has received “over half a million” pre-order reservations for its service so far, which includes advance deposits on the hardware.
However, Starlink is not the only thing on SpaceX’s mind. It also successfully launched its second batch of astronauts into space last week, on the Crew 2 mission. Moreover, it’s also trying to speed up the development process of Starship spacecraft, with a test scheduled for it today.
