SpaceX launched 60 more Starlink Internet satellites Wednesday aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff from pad 39A occurred at 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT), and the Falcon 9’s previously-flown first stage successfully landed on SpaceX’s offshore drone ship.
No one had ever lost 26 satellites at once until a launch failure bit Planet Labs last year, temporarily setting back the San Francisco startup’s ambition to map the globe every day.
The Starlink 10-15 mission came a day after SpaceX launched a trio of spacecraft to study the effects of the Sun. Liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station happened at 4:39 a.m. EDT (0839 UTC).