SpaceX launches 6,000th Starlink satellite on Friday night flight
SpaceX tied its rocket-reuse record on Friday (March 15), while placing its 6,000th Starlink internet satellite into Earth orbit.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 more of the company's Starlink satellites launched at 8:21 p.m. EDT (0021 GMT March 16) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
It was the 19th liftoff for this Falcon 9's first stage, according to a SpaceX mission description. That tied a mark set this past December and matched for the first time last month.
The launch also raised the number of Starlink satellites launched into space to more than 6,000 since SpaceX began deploying the constellation in 2019.
Related: Starlink satellite train: How to see and track it in the night sky
To plan, the Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after liftoff, landing on the droneship "A Shortfall of Gravitas," which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
The Falcon 9's upper stage continued hauling the 23 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit, where they were to be released about 65.5 minutes after liftoff.
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Extensive rocket reuse is a key priority for SpaceX and its founder and CEO, Elon Musk. Indeed, the company's next-generation vehicle, called Starship, is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, a breakthrough that Musk thinks will make Mars settlement economically feasible.
The launch on Friday follows SpaceX's mostly-successful third test flight of Starship, which lifted off from the company's Starbase site in South Texas. That mission launched on Thursday morning.
