Update 8:57 PM EDT: SpaceX has adjusted the T-0 launch time.
SpaceX followed up its fourth test flight of its massive Starship rocket in South Texas with a Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Friday night’s flight marked the 344th Falcon 9 launch, a little more than 14 years after its launch on June 4, 2010.
The Starlink 10-1 mission added 22 more satellites to a massive constellation of more than 6,000 active satellites in low Earth orbit, according to expert orbital tracker and astronomer Jonathan McDowell. Liftoff from pad 40 occurred at 9:56 p.m. EDT (0156 UTC).
The first stage booster supporting this mission, terminal number B1069 in the SpaceX fleet, has already launched after 16. It previously supported the launch of SpaceX’s 24th cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station (CRS-24), Eutelsat’s Hotbed 18F satellite and 11 previous batches of Starlink satellites .
About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1069 lands on a SpaceX booster, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’. This was the 74th booster landing at ASOG and the 317th booster landing to date. If you set aside the Falcon Heavy side booster landing, it was also the 301st booster landing from a Falcon 9 rocket.
The mission comes about a day and a half after the company took significant steps forward with its Starship program. Flight 4 was not only an opportunity to further validate the technology within the rocket, but also SpaceX’s Starlink network.
“Starlink on Starship once again enabled real-time telemetry and live high-definition video during each phase of entry with external cameras providing views through the end of flight,” SpaceX wrote on its website after the mission.
Top heating. A starship on a good entry trajectory pic.twitter.com/H0Gv6hyvt2
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 6, 2024
During the ascent and coasting phase of the upper stage of spacecraft 29, SpaceX advertised the views with a watermark reading “Views by Starlink”. This allowed viewers to witness the rocket pass through the point of peak heating as the red-pink plasma highlighting the reentry graduated to a bright magenta.
It also allowed for continuous viewing of the starship’s forward flap, which nearly ripped off but held on to allow for a controlled splashdown, as well as a flurry of social media memes that ranged from “Terminator 2” to “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.”
“From South Texas to the other side of the Earth, there’s a starship in the water. Wow, what a day,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot said during the company’s livestream. “That was absolutely incredible. We had a view almost all the way down. The analysis said we could do it, not if it could happen. But Starlink went through and we were able to get that signal.”
“We started getting some debris on the cameras and everything, but we were able to see it.
Starlink will get another key technology demonstration later this summer, when the four-person crew of the Polaris Dawn mission, commanded by businessman Jared Isaacman, conducts an in-orbit communications test.
The starship performed a controlled reentry, successfully managed the peak heating and maximum aerodynamic pressure phases, and demonstrated the ability to control the vehicle using flaps while descending through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds. pic.twitter.com/p8bC9UweLx
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 6, 2024