A Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday successfully launched another batch of 22 mini-satellites into orbit to add to the orbital constellation of the Starlink global Internet coverage system, the developer SpaceX said.
“The launch of 22 Starlink satellites has been confirmed,” the statement said.
The launch took place from Launch Complex 40 at U.S. Space Force Base at Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 08:20 U.S. East Coast time (3:20 p.m. QT).
It was the 88th launch of Internet satellites since May 2019 as part of the Starlink project and the 19th since the beginning of this year. Including the current launch, SpaceX has already put into orbit more than 4.5 thousand such satellites. Some of them have failed or fallen out of orbit. More than 4,200 apparatuses remain in orbit in working condition.
At the same time, the first reusable stage of the launch vehicle, which was used to launch for the third time, in about nine minutes after the launch made a controlled vertical landing on the offshore platform-drone in the Atlantic.
A Falcon 9 rocket on Saturday (Kiev time) launched into orbit with a group of 51 research mini-satellites as part of the Transporter 7 mission, the carrier company SpaceX said.
The satellite group includes satellites from NASA, U.S. companies and research centers, as well as a number of foreign countries.
The launch took place from the SLC-4E launch pad at U.S. Space Force Base Vandenberg in California on Friday at 23:48 U.S. Pacific Coast Time (Saturday at 09:48 Kiev time).
As part of the launch, the first reusable stage of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle, which is in its tenth use, is scheduled to make a controlled vertical landing at Vandenberg Base about eight minutes after liftoff.
A representative office of Elon Musk’s SpaceX company – Starlink Ukraine – has been registered in Ukraine, Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of Digital Transformation Mikhail Fedorov said.
“Starlink Ukraine (“Starlink Ukraine”), as a representative office of SpaceX, has just been registered in Ukraine,” he wrote on his Telegram channel on Wednesday.
Ukraine has preliminarily selected the American company SpaceX of Elon Musk to launch the Sich 2-30 (2-1) remote sensing satellite in December this year and is currently in technical negotiations with it, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Strategic Industries of Ukraine Oleh Urusky has said.
“We really have a window to launch the device in December with the help of a foreign operator – in this case SpaceX, with which we are now cooperating in terms of the compatibility of the device with launch vehicles,” the deputy prime minister said in an interview on Pershy Dilovy TV channel.
According to him, the corresponding decision was made by the president.
Urusky clarified that work with SpaceX is going on intensively and in the near future it will be clear whether it is fundamentally possible to combine the Ukrainian satellite with a SpaceX launch vehicle.
The official noted that today the satellite is practically ready.
“It requires final analysis and operational checks of technical readiness for launch,” he explained.
Urusky added that he personally visited Pivdenmash in Dnipro, where he checked the real state of the spacecraft.
He recalled that the last time Ukraine launched a remote sensing satellite was 10 years ago, so the launch of the new satellite will be an outstanding event.
As reported, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this year, commenting on Musk’s statement about communication with the family of Serhiy Korolyov, invited the American businessman and founder of the space company SpaceX to visit the Korolyov Museum of Cosmonautics in Zhytomyr.
