SpaceX launches 27 mini-Starlink satellites
SpaceX today successfully launched 27 mini-Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its tenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. This launch had been aborted at T-11 seconds two days ago when an airplane had entered the range unexpectedly.
The 2025 launch race:
10 SpaceX
4 China
1 Blue Origin
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
SpaceX today successfully launched 27 mini-Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its tenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. This launch had been aborted at T-11 seconds two days ago when an airplane had entered the range unexpectedly.
The 2025 launch race:
10 SpaceX
4 China
1 Blue Origin
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
> drone ship in the Atlantic
Was that a copy/pasta error?
That would be a new thing – launching from Vandy and landing in the Atlantic.
Arrrg… Pasta Errors! That‘s worse than the Spaghetti Incident!
Marshall: Thank you. The error was in my brain entirely. Fixed.
I’ll confess I initially wondered if that “27” in the payload description wasn’t another case of errant keyboarding but other sources concur. That would seem to indicate that the V2-mini version of the Starlink sat has been recently sent to a fat farm and emerged more svelte. If they now tip the scales at little enough that 27 at a time can be flown from Vandy, perhaps 30 or more will soon be departing on each mission out of KSC/Canaveral. That will, of course, accelerate SpaceX’s pace of Starlink deployments even above and beyond what would be expected from the F9’s advancing launch cadence.
Both the increases to cadence and the reducing regimen administered to Starlink V2-minis suggest that both will play a continuing role in building out the population and capacity of the Starlink constellation even with Starship is perhaps as little as a couple of months away from the start of it own heavyweight contributions to the cause. I foresee F9 and the V2-mini continuing Starlink missions at maximum achievable chat until the constellation reaches the maximum number of ca. 42,000 specified in its current and pending FCC licenses. Only when that occurs – and all V1 and V1.5 Starlinks have been replaced and de-orbited as well – might F9-based Starlink deployment missions end. I think we will be seeing such missions continue for at least another five years and perhaps for even longer if not only the mass of V2-minis continues to decline but their bandwidth capacity also takes steps upward.