On Thursday, May 2, SpaceX launched a second set of its Starlink internet satellites as part of a doubleheader of spaceflight missions.
On May 3, at 10:37 p.m. EDT (0237 GMT), a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 Starlink satellites took out from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
SpaceX launched Starlink for the second time that day. Earlier on Thursday afternoon, a Falcon 9 rocket from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base successfully launched two Earth-observation satellites for the company Maxar.
The first stage of the Falcon 9 returned to Earth for a vertical landing on the SpaceX droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas, which was positioned in the Atlantic Ocean, following the launch of the Starlink satellites tonight.
As per the SpaceX mission description, this was the booster’s 19th launch and landing. The record for the most rocket reused by the business, set last month and shared by two other Falcon 9s, including the one that took off from Vandenberg on Thursday, is only one shy of that.
Currently, SpaceX has over 5,800 operational satellites in its low-Earth orbit broadband network, Starlink.
Several of those spacecraft have already been launched this year; of the 43 orbital flights that SpaceX has flown in 2024, 29 have been dedicated to the expansion of the Starlink megaconstellation.