At 6:59 a.m. EST on May 18, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched 53 "star chain" satellites at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This is also the third batch of "star chain" satellites launched by SpaceX in five days. Earlier, at 15:07 Pacific time on May 13, SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the 45th batch of 53 "star chain" satellites at Vandenberg space force base in California.
launch
In less than 24 hours, at 16:40 US Eastern time on May 14, the SpaceX new Falcon 9 rocket launched the 46th batch of 53 "star chain" satellites at the space force base in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
return
This launch is the 47th batch of "star chain" satellites specially deployed by SpaceX since the first batch of 60 "star chain" satellites were launched in May 2019, and it is also the 14th batch of "star chain" satellites specially distributed this year. Last year, SpaceX set a record of 31 Falcon 9 rockets launched in the whole year, of which 17 were launched by specially deploying the "star chain" satellite network.
Taking into account the "star chain" satellites carried by the previous "carpool", up to now, SpaceX has launched 2651 "star chain" satellites in total. Taking into account the two test satellites microsat-2a and microsat-2b launched in February 2018, SpaceX launched 2653 "star chain" satellites.
landing
This launch is also the fifth flight and landing of the Falcon 9 primary booster. After the primary and secondary stages are separated, the primary booster returns and lands. Prior to this mission, the booster had carried out the arabsat-6a mission, launched the space test program 2 (stp-2) mission for the U.S. military, launched the Italian earth observation satellite and a "star chain" mission.