SpaceX sends more than 100 satellites skyward in a dazzling Sunday launch
It's been a busy weekend for SpaceX.
The company sent yet another rocket racing off into orbit on Sunday morning after a planned Saturday launch was called off due to inclement weather. The rocket, dubbed Transporter-1, is loaded with some very special cargo: A gigantic pile of satellites.
There are 143 in total aboard Transporter-1. Of those, 133 belong to government and business interests. The other 10 are Starlink satellites, the orbital high-speed internet project spearheaded by SpaceX.
Notably, Transporter-1's cargo makes this particular launch more historic than most. The 143 satellites it's ferrying up into the space are "the most spacecraft ever deployed on a single mission," according to SpaceX.
The scheduled 10:00 a.m. ET launch at Florida's Cape Canaveral proceeded without issue after Saturday's postponement. (It was actually the second postponement for this mission, which was originally supposed to launch back in December.)
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The "ride-share" mission — so called because of all the non-SpaceX satellites that hitched a ride — used SpaceX's Falcon 9, a partially reusable two-stage launch vehicle. It's "two-stage" because part of the rocket detaches after launch and returns to Earth.
That happened here about 10 minutes after launch, with the bulk of the Falcon 9's body detaching and making a safe landing about the SpaceX drone ship called Of Course I Still Love You. You can watch that landing at roughly the 26-minute mark in the below video.
Many of the satellite deployments are also watchable in the below video of SpaceX's launch livestream. It's not as exciting or dramatic to watch as a rocket liftoff, but as the purpose of the entire mission it's something worth tuning in for during the video's second hour.
Topics SpaceX
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
