A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sent 60 more Starlink Internet satellites into space from Cape Canaveral late Monday. With a landing on an off-shore droneship, an effort to retrieve the first step crashed, snapping a run of 24 victories in a row.
Late this afternoon, SpaceX Starlink Booster B1059.3 got back to the dock and slowly got all its legs lifted in one of the steps to returning the booster to the hanger so it can start its process all over again. Next mission #4 unknown, but I am sure it won't take long. The photo was taken from Greg Scott's Twitter account.
Another launch of Starlink, with another 60 satellites on board, is scheduled for early Wednesday from the neighboring Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX pushes forward to create a globe-spanning constellation intended to provide consumers across the world with internet connectivity.
"It does look like we did not land our booster on Of Course I Still Love You tonight," SpaceX manufacturing engineer Jessica Anderson said during live launch commentary per Space.com. "It is unfortunate that we did not recover this booster, but our second stage is still on a nominal trajectory."
It is not yet clear what caused the landing mishap could have on Wednesday's flight if any.
Here's What Happened to The Falcon 9
The flight on Monday had a fantastic start at 10:59 p.m. EST as the nine first-stage engines of the Falcon 9 rocket exploded with a blast of fuel moved the 229-foot-tall booster at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station away from pad 40.
The engines produced 1.7 million pounds of thrust. They powered the rocket away on a northeasterly course, speeding quickly as propellants were consumed and the spacecraft lost weight.
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The first level, making its sixth flight, separated after climbing out of the dense lower atmosphere and heading for landing on an off-shore droneship.
As usual, before plunging back into the lower atmosphere, the booster began firing of its engines to slow down, but the shutdown, shown in the downlinked footage, did not seem natural.
A monitor on the drone ship later revealed the light of a "burn" landing off to one side. Still, the booster never showed up and potentially dropped into the surrounding ocean.
SpaceX Missions 2021: Will It Launch More Starlink Satellites?
It was SpaceX's first failed booster retrieval since March 2020's sixth Starlink flight. Since then, 24 good recoveries in a row until Monday's mishap have been carried out by the California rocket maker. But the landing fault did not impact the results of the mission on Monday. The second stage of the Falcon 9, fuelled by a single vacuum-rated engine, shot twice as scheduled to enter the planned orbit approximately 45 minutes after liftoff. Around 20 minutes later, the 60 Starlinks were allowed to travel on their own.
Earlier this month, the organization intended to dispatch two batches of Starlinks from Florida within hours of each other, but one of these missions was delayed. (That launch is set for Tuesday evening now.)
These launches are becoming relatively normal for SpaceX and the droneship landings that accompany them, but Musk wants to see the speed of launches increase. According to CNet, the FCC's approval for the service of Starlink allows 2,212 of its satellites to be operational by March of next year.
SpaceX has already launched more than 1,100 Starlinks. The organization has regulatory clearance to launch more than 12,000 satellites, building a network of relay stations that provide clients around the world with two-way internet access.
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