Today, SpaceX completed its last mission in 2024 by launching a new group of Starlink satellites.
According to RCO News Agency, A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched today, December 31 at 12:34 am EST with 21 Starlink broadband iernet satellites, including 13 satellites with direct transmission capabilities. It took off in Mobile from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Ceer in Florida.
According to Spacey, This launch marked the 134th Falcon 9 flight in 2024 and surpassed SpaceX’s record of 38 missions last year. 89 of this year’s launches were dedicated to the expansion of the Starlink global network.
Today’s launch was the third SpaceX Falcon 9 launch in the past three days, after the Starlink mission from California and the launch of four satellites for Astranis from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base.
As planned, the Falcon 9 first stage returned to Earth about eight minutes after liftoff and landed on SpaceX’s floating unmanned landing pad in the Atlaic Ocean.
Meanwhile, the Falcon 9 upper stage successfully placed 21 Starlink satellites io low-Earth orbit.
According to the SpaceX mission description, this was the 16th flight for the first stage booster, previously launched in the missions “Crew-6”, “BlueBird-1”, “USSF-124”. 124), “mPOWER-B” and 11 other Starlink missions were used.
Starlink is the largest satellite network deployed to date, and as today’s launch shows, it coinues to grow. According to satellite tracker and astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, there are currely more than 6,850 active Starlink satellites in this network.
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