SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Station on Monday evening, carrying 23 Starlink satellites. This mission marks SpaceX's 175th flight from its work platform to date.
The Starlink 6-46 mission was launched at 7:42 PM EDT (2342 UTC) from Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40). This was also the twentieth mission to launch from Florida in 2024.
The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, SpaceX fleet number B1078, was launched for the eighth time. It has previously launched NASA's Crew-6 mission, NASA's O3b mPOWER 3 & 4 satellites, the USSF-124 mission and four Starlink flights.
About eight and a half minutes after liftoff, B1078 touched down on the SpaceX drone, dubbed “A Shortfall of Gravitas.” This was the 62nd landing on ASOG and the 228th booster landing to date.
SpaceX's Starlink constellation will expand to 5,680 satellites in orbit, according to numbers tracked by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. More than 6,000 Starlink satellites have been launched so far.
Earlier in the day in Texas, SpaceX also conducted a static fire test of SpaceX 29, the upper stage vehicle that will be used during the fourth Integrated Flight Test (IFT-4) of the Starship rocket.
Full-duration static fire of all six Raptor engines aboard the Expedition 4 spacecraft pic.twitter.com/hzS4SeaoEV
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 25, 2024
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