Oct. 16 (UPI) — SpaceX set a milestone Thursday morning as it marked the 130th launch of its Falcon 9 rocket.
The Falcon 9 that launched 28 Starlink satellites took off at 5:57 a.m. EDT Thursday morning from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and deployed the devices into low-Earth orbit some 64 minutes after leaving the planet.
It represented Falcon 9’s 130th flight of the year, only two short of its 2024 single-year record.
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The rocket’s first stage returned to Earth slightly less than nine minutes later as planned on SpaceX’s drone ship Just Read The Instructions sitting in the Atlantic Ocean.
The B1095-designated rocket booster on the Falcon 9 carried the 28 satellite devices to expand global Internet access by the Elon Musk-owned companies and was this booster’s third launch and landing.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 28 Starlink satellites on mission 10-52 at 5:27 AM from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It’s first stage returned to Earth 8.5 minutes later as planned on SpaceX’s drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Photo by Joe Marino/UPI
More than 70% of Falcon 9 launches this year have supported the expansion of the Starlink network, now numbering nearly 8,600 operational satellites.
On Wednesday, Musk’s SpaceX sent a further 21 satellites into orbit from its California base for the U.S. military’s Space Development Agency.
On Thursday, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exhaust plume changed color at altitude as it launched 28 Starlink satellites at 5:27 AM from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The B1095-desiganted rocket booster was its third launch and landing. Photo by Joe Marino/UPI