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The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket successfully took off with the 12th Starlink batch from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Following the separation of the stages, SpaceX landed the first stage of the Falcon 9 on one of the drone ships in the Atlantic Ocean, the company said in a statement.
The Starlink satellites were deployed approximately 15 minutes after take-off.
The launch marks the first Starlink mission this month and SpaceX’s sixteenth mission so far in 2020.
SpaceX has so far delivered more than 700 of its Internet-broadcasting satellites to space.
According to Musk, there must be between 500 and 800 satellites in orbit before they broadcast the cheaper internet.
In May 2019, Elon Musk-owned SpaceX launched its first batch of 60 Starlink communications satellites, which surprised astronomers and laymen with their appearance in the night sky.
Astronomers have warned that satellite constellations such as SpaceX’s Starlink network could disproportionately affect science programs that require twilight observations, such as searches for asteroids and comets that threaten Earth.
Large constellations of bright satellites in low Earth orbit will fundamentally change Earth’s optical and infrared astronomy and could affect the appearance of the night sky for astronomers around the world, says the Satellite Constellations 1 (SATCON1) report released later this month. last.
Starlink is SpaceX’s ambitious project to launch and operate its own broadband satellite network, which will deliver low-cost Internet to remote locations globally.
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