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news on June 18, US local time on Friday, SpaceX used 12 times of recovered Falcon 9 rocket to put 53 satellite chains into orbit, making it the carrier rocket with the largest number of flights of the company so far, setting the latest record for repeated launch of a single rocket p>
at 12:09 a.m. EDT on Friday, the rocket was launched from the Kennedy Space Center of NASA. 53 satellites were planned to be deployed into low earth orbit about 15.5 minutes after launch. The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket (b1060 booster) landed on the SpaceX unmanned recovery ship anchored in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida p>
this is the 13th launch and landing of this Falcon 9 rocket, creating a new record for the reuse of SpaceX carrier rocket. It is reported that this rocket has previously carried out three commercial missions, including launching GPS III sv03 satellite, Turkish communication satellite turksat 5A and micro satellite carpool launch mission transporter 2. In addition, it has also launched nine batches of satellite chain satellites and put about 160 tons of satellites into orbit within two years p>
spacex's payload for this launch is 53 Starlink v1.5 satellites, with a total weight of about 16 tons. These satellites are slightly larger than the previous version, and there is no "sun visor" used to reduce the possible interference with the reflected light of astronomical observation, because it will interfere with the laser link between satellites. Even so, the new satellite chain reflects less sunlight than the original version. Its design feature is to minimize the impact of the expanding network on the observation of optical and radio telescopes p>
satellite chain is the space-based Satellite Internet Project of SpaceX. The company has launched more than 2700 microsatellites into orbit, and this number is increasing rapidly over time. Its second-generation network may eventually consist of up to 30000 satellites p>
more importantly, this launch is the 100th since SpaceX first used the recovered Falcon rocket booster in march2017, marking the 50th consecutive successful recovery of the company's rocket and the 130th consecutive successful launch of Falcon 9 rocket. The previous record was set by the Russian Soyuz /r-7 rocket combination, which successfully launched 133 times in a row p>
for SpaceX and its founder and CEO elonmusk, it is crucial to realize the large-scale reuse of launch vehicles. Musk has repeatedly said that the rapid and complete repeated launch capability is a key breakthrough, which will enable humans to settle on Mars and achieve other ambitious Aerospace feats p>
Friday's launch is the first of three missions SpaceX plans to perform from three different launch stations in three days. The company also plans to launch the sarah-1 radar satellite for the German military on Saturday morning (June 18) Eastern time, and launch a commercial communication satellite on early Sunday (June 19) p>
if the plan goes smoothly, SpaceX will complete three orbital launches within 36 hours and 19 minutes, and the launch of satellite chain is only 10 hours away from the launch of sarah-1. In addition, SpaceX is tentatively scheduled to perform two other tasks in June, launching the communication satellite ses-22 on June 28 and launching the satellite link satellite again at the end of the month p>
so far this year, SpaceX has launched 24 missions, of which 15 have been used to launch satellite chains. (small)