A Falcon 9 rocket lofted another batch of satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink internet service from California on Friday.
Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base occurred at 10:14 p.m. PST (1:14 a.m. EST, 0614 UTC on Saturday) after a two-day delay.
The Starlink 9-10 mission added another 20 satellites to the growing megaconstellation in low Earth orbit. Among them are 13 satellites that include Direct-to-Cell capabilities. SpaceX confirmed a successful payload deployment a little more than hour after launch.
The Falcon 9 first stage booster for this mission, tail number B1081 in the SpaceX fleet, was launching for an 11th time. Its previous missions included the launches of the Crew-7 astronaut mission to the International Space Station, the CRS-29 cargo flight to the ISS, and NASA’s PACE mission.
Once it left the pad, the Falcon 9 rocket flew in a southeasterly trajectory along the coastlines of California and Mexico. A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1081 landed on the SpaceX droneship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You,’ which was positioned in the Pacific Ocean.
The 13 Starlink satellites on board the mission featuring DTC capabilities bring the total number of such satellites launched to 285. Following the most recent launch of these satellites in late October, Ben Longmier, the senior director of satellite engineering for SpaceX, said the company was closing in completing this initial segment of the DTC Starlink constellation.
“We will continue to launch and improve the service after that in order to improve the coverage and latency for our partner telcos around the world,” Longmier said in an Oct. 30 post on X, formerly Twitter. Some of those partners include T-Mobile in the U.S., One New Zealand in New Zealand and Rogers in Canada.
Once this flight is in the books, he said there will be just four more launches need to reach their goal.
Also in late October, Longmeir said they conducted the first DTC tests in Japan.
First @Starlink Direct to Cell demo in Japan with our great partner @official_kddi @au_official !!
The test occurred on the island of Kumejima, Okinawa Prefecture, a very beautiful place. https://t.co/WkvyBc3FB5
— Ben Longmier (@longmier) October 24, 2024