Update July 26, 12:56 a.m.: The Falcon 9 booster landed on the droneship.
SpaceX launched another 24 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit onboard a Falcon 9 rocket flying from Vandenberg Space Force Base Saturday night.
The Starlink 17-2 mission took a southerly trajectory as the rocket soared from Space Launch Complex 4 East. It will deploy the satellites into a polar orbit to bolster internet service in the world’s polar regions.
The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 9:31 p.m. PDT (12:31 a.m. EDT / 0431 UTC).
SpaceX used the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1075, which made its 19th trip to space and back. Its previous missions included the Transporter-11 rideshare, SARah-2 and 15 batches of Starlink satellites.
Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1075 landed on the droneship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You,’ positioned in the Pacific Ocean. This was the 142nd landing for this vessel and the 481st booster landing to date for SpaceX.
The mission comes as the company readies its third and final, planned astronaut mission of the year, which is set to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday at the earliest. The four members of that mission, dubbed Crew-11, arrived in the Sunshine State Saturday afternoon ahead of a launch rehearsal scheduled for Monday.
