SpaceX launches the first part of its satellite internet network
The first part of SpaceX's ambitious satellite internet network is in orbit.
On Thursday evening, the spaceflight company deployed 60 of its Starlink satellites from its Falcon 9 rocket, which launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The launch took place just shortly after 10:30 p.m. local time, with the Falcon 9's first stage booster landing approximately nine minutes after takeoff on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship, located in the Atlantic Ocean.
It's the third launch and landing of this particular first stage booster, which flew for the first time last September for the Telstar 18 Vantage mission, and again in January for the Iridium-8 launch.
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Around an hour and two minutes after takeoff, the payload of Starlink satellites were successfully deployed at an altitude of 440 km above Earth, where they slowly separated from each other as they drifted into space.
The satellites will then use onboard propulsion to reach an operational altitude of 550 km.
The launch, which was meant to take place last week, was delayed twice after inclement weather and additional checks prompted SpaceX to hold off.
It's the company's heaviest ever payload, weighing in at 18.5 tons, according to a tweet by CEO Elon Musk last week. Each Starlink satellite weighs approximately 227 kg, and it's the most amount of satellites SpaceX has deployed at one time.
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There are plenty more of these satellites to come: SpaceX wants to launch 12,000 of these things to build a network capable of connecting the entire world to the internet, with the aim of connecting places which aren't already online.
It's an admirable project, but it doesn't come without criticism, with the amount of space debris these satellites could potentially create well-noted.
