SpaceX It will launch 50 satellites and land the returning extruder today (February 25), and you can watch the event live.
two stages Falcon 9 Rocket topped with 50 starlink The spacecraft is scheduled to launch online from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California today at 12:12 PM EDT (1712 GMT; 9:12 AM California local time). You can watch the live broadcast here on Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly through the company. Coverage will start 15 minutes before take off.
And there will be plenty to see. About nine minutes after launch, the first stage of Falcon 9 will return to Earth for a vertical landing on Of Course I Still Love You, a SpaceX drone that will be stationed hundreds of miles off the California coast.
Related: SpaceX’s massive Starlink satellite is being launched in pictures
This will be the fourth landing for this particular booster. The first stage also helped launch NASA’s Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich Earth observation satellite and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites in November 2020, as well as 60 Starlink satellites in May 2021 and the Dual Spacecraft for NASA’s asteroid redirection test in November . 2021, SpaceX representatives said.
This reuse is a priority for SpaceX and its founder and CEO, Elon Musk. Musk aims to help humanity colonize Mars, and the billionaire entrepreneur believes that fully and quickly reusable rockets are the key breakthrough needed to make that happen.
Today’s launch is Starlink’s third February mission for SpaceX, following the launch of 49 satellites on February 3 and the launch of 46 satellites on Monday (February 21). Latest mission marked 100 Falcon 9 first stage landings during an orbital flight.
The Starlink mission on February 3 was also notable, but for a completely different reason. Shortly after liftoff, a solar explosion triggered a geomagnetic storm on Earth, thickening our atmosphere sufficiently By shooting down most of the newly launched satellites by drag. SpaceX said it will launch the Starlink spacecraft to slightly higher initial altitudes in the future to protect against such storms.
SpaceX has launched more than 2,000 Starlink satellites so far, and many more are set to go up. The company has permission to launch 12,000 broadband spacecraft, and has applied for approval to launch up to 30,000 more.
Mike Wall is the author of “AbroadBook (Great Grand Publishing House, 2018; illustrated by Carl Tate), a book on the search for extraterrestrials. Follow him on Twitter Tweet embed. Follow us on Twitter Tweet embed or on Facebook.
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