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SpaceX It will launch more than forty satellites and land the return rocket today (February 21) and you can watch the action live.
two stages Falcon 9 Rocket topped with 46 from SpaceX starlink The broadband spacecraft is scheduled to take off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Sunday at 9:44 a.m. EDT (1444 GMT). You can watch it live here on Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly through the company. SpaceX’s webcast will begin about 15 minutes before launch.
The launch plan includes a rocket landing: About nine minutes after takeoff, the first stage of the Falcon 9 will return to Earth for a vertical landing on a SpaceX A Shortfall of Gravitas drone, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean a few hundred miles away. Florida coast.
SpaceX initially planned to launch the mission on Sunday, but delayed it by one day due to bad weather to recover the missile. “Because the weather has recovered, it is now targeting Monday, February 21 at 9:44AM EDT for the Starlink launch,” SpaceX said. wrote on twitter Saturday. there 90% chance of good weather At launch time today, according to the US Space Force’s Delta 45 group at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Related: SpaceX’s massive Starlink satellite is being launched in pictures
Monday will be the eleventh launch and landing of this first stage of Falcon 9, According to EverydayAstronaut.com. This will bind the SpaceX reuse record, which is set by a different Falcon 9 kernel During Starlink launch in December.
SpaceX has already launched three large batches of Starlink this year – two in January and one on February 3. However, the last mission ran into a serious problem, thanks to the solar flare, which caused a geomagnetic solar storm here on Earth.
This storm increased the density of the atmosphere, increasing the resistance of the newly launched Starlink satellites. As a result, 40 of the 49 spacecraft were expected to arrive back to earthSpaceX representatives said. In the end, 38 Starlinks fell from space, with 11 more raising their orbits, according to Spaceflight Now.
It appears that SpaceX is targeting a higher orbit to launch new Starlink satellites on today’s flight, According to a report by Spaceflight Nowreducing the number of satellites from 49 to 46. They will be deployed in a semi-circular target orbit between 202 miles and 209 miles (325-337 kilometers) at the highest and lowest points, Spaceflight Now reports.
SpaceX said the lowest altitude of satellites lost in the solar storm was about 130 miles (210 kilometres). The company intentionally deploys its large constellations of Starlink satellites into low orbits so they can return to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere to avoid creating space debris if they suffer an orbital malfunction.
SpaceX has already launched about 2,100 Starlink satellites into orbit, with more than 200 falling out of orbit due to failure or decommissioning, According to Spaceflight Now. But the company is not finished yet. SpaceX has received approval to launch 12,000 Starlink vehicles and has applied for permission from an international regulator for up to 30,000 more vehicles.
revision: An initial version of this story stated that SpaceX aims to launch 49 Starlink satellites into orbit on the Starlink 4-8 mission. SpaceX is already flying 46 Starlinks on board.
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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