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SPACE X LAUNCHED its Falcon 9 rocket carrying a record number of satellites on board, the private space company said.
The rocket successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 10:00 am (1500 GMT), 24 hours after its initial take-off had been scrubbed due to bad weather.
Andy Tran, a SpaceX production supervisor, said in a video of the launch that the Falcon 9 was carrying 133 commercial and government “spacecraft” as well 10 SpaceX satellites.
“The most spacecraft ever deployed on a single mission,” Tran said.
SpaceX is flying Falcon 9 under a “rideshare” program through which other firms and governments pay the Elon Musk-founded company to deliver their technologies to space.
Minutes after taking off, the Falcon 9′s main booster that had thrust the rocket to the edge of space separated from the rest of the craft and dropped back down to Earth in a controlled fall.
It landed itself on an unmanned spaceport drone ship called “Of Course I Still Love You” in the Atlantic Ocean, marking the booster’s fifth successful deployment and recapture.
In a series of tweets, SpaceX said all 143 satellites had been successfully deployed.
SpaceX aims to send thousands of small satellites into space to form a global broadband system called Starlink.
Scientists have expressed concerns about the number of objects clogging the space around Earth. SpaceX say their satellites are designed to burn up in the atmosphere within a few years.
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Are these the satellites that they will use to spy on everyone who takes the vaccine?
@eoin carroll: Doo Bart, do a Thumph
@eoin carroll: Hang on, isn’t that supposed to be carried out using self-scanning checkouts and 5g networks???
:-)
Wish I could go to space…. Can’t even go to the pub..
Amazing stuff, nothing like watching the falcon heavy boosters making the return landings, here’s hoping the SN09 launches in the next couple of days and sticks a perfect landing.
@Watchful Axe: Would be a hell of a sight
@Watchful Axe: Love watching those returns.
Elon is basically spamming low earth orbit with satellites these days. The lions share of satellites to be launched this year are his ones. Hopefully the system will work as expected
No news about the crowd that launched a rocket from a modified 737
@Quiet Goer: Virgin right? Was a success – https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/18/watch-virgin-orbit-launch-a-rocket-to-space-from-a-modified-747-for-the-first-time/
@Quiet Goer: ah that was last week’s news
@Quiet Goer: 747
I saw an array of them about 50 in the sky one night. At first I thought they were military aircraft flying in formation, followed by, no they’re aliens, then no they’re IBM’s flying from the US to China.
More vermin!
wen hop #Jeff who?
I for one approve of the Banksian naming convention.
It’s a very cool sight to see the string of satellites trail across the sky, seen them 12 .ontgs ago when they were at relatively low orbit, think they slowly blast higher as time goes on, very cool to see
It must be getting fairly cluttered up there.
Maith sibh
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