On June 4, the Falcon 9 heavy vehicle successfully launched 60 microsatellites (to 480 ones already existed in orbit) to low Earth orbit to continue the deployment of Starlink’s global Internet coverage, SpaceX said.
This is the eighth launch of a group of Internet satellites under the Starlink project started in May 2019.
The launch of the two-stage rocket was carried out at 9:25 p.m. on June 3 of the U.S. East Coast (June 4, 4:25 a.m. of Kyiv time) from the NASA cosmodrome at Cape Canaveral.
A new group of Starlink satellites deployed in an elliptical orbit ranging from 212 km to 386 km. After SpaceX engineers checked the satellites’ operability using their own ion engines, they will rise to a standard 550 km altitude orbit.
Each satellite weights 260 kg. The first stage of the SpaceX launch vehicle, which is being used for the fifth time, made a controlled landing on the floating platform Just Read the Instructions located in the Atlantic.
SpaceX plans to deploy 12,000 satellites (out of 30,000 planned to be deployed in the future) to create a full-covered Network that will provide Earth’s inhabitants with broadband Internet access around the world.
The company said that as early as in 2020, satellites will provide Internet coverage throughout North America, and by 2021 will cover almost the entire planet. The total investment for the project is estimated at USD 10 billion.
Read also: SpaceX successfully launch batch of satellites.
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