The Falcon 9 launch vehicle on Saturday put into orbit a batch of 21 mini-satellites to replenish the orbital constellation of the Starlink system’s global Internet coverage network, developer SpaceX said.
“On Saturday, February 8 at 2:18 p.m. ET (9:18 p.m. Kiev time), a Falcon 9 rocket launched 21 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit, including 13 with direct cellular access capability,” the company said in a statement on its website.
The rocket was launched from the 40th launch complex of the U.S. Space Force base at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
As part of the launch, the first reusable stage of the launch vehicle, which was used for the 17th time, made a controlled vertical landing on the offshore drone platform A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic after separation.
Since May 2019, SpaceX has already launched more than 7,800 such satellites as part of the Starlink project. Some of them failed or went out of orbit. More than 6.9 thousand vehicles are in orbit in working condition.
SpaceX is the largest satellite operator in the world. Starlink Internet network is available to users in 75 countries, including North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. According to the Pentagon, the services of these satellites are also actively used by the U.S. military.
