SpaceX sends 23 more Starlink satellites into orbit in Falcon 9 launch from Florida

Don Jacobson
·1 min read
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UPI
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, such as the one pictured here from March 3, was used to send 23 more Starlink satellites into orbit from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Monday. File Photo by Joe Marino/UPI

March 25 (UPI) -- SpaceX on Monday successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a batch of 23 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The craft took off as scheduled from Space Launch Complex 40 at 7:42 p.m.

The Falcon 9's first stage landed on the A Shortfall of Gravitas drone ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean following the launch, SpaceX said.

The launch marked the eighth flight for the first-stage booster used in Monday's mission. It previously had been used for Crew-6, SES O3b mPOWER, USSF-124, and four earlier Starlink missions.

The Falcon 9's upper stage was scheduled to deploy the 23 Starlink satellites approximately 65 minutes after liftoff.

Some 28 other Falcon 9 missions have been carried out already this year, including one on Thursday in which a Dragon cargo capsule filled with supplies and experiments for the International Space Station was sent into orbit.

A week ago, Space X launched a similar batch of Starlink satellites from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The constellation of more than 5,000 satellites seeks to offer high-speed, low-latency Internet worldwide.