On Friday, a SpaceX rocket carrying 53 Starlink satellites took off from California, bringing the total number of launches to more than 2500 The Falcon 9 booster took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 6:07 a.m. Beijing time today (May 14). A few minutes later, the first stage landed on an unmanned ship in the Pacific Ocean, and the second stage continued to fly to low earth orbit.
The satellite deployment is scheduled to take place in about an hour. Friday's launch was conducted at the space launch site 4E (slc-4e) of the West Coast launch site and entered the 53.2 degree orbit of the fourth layer of the satellite constellation.
According to the current design, the first generation Starlink constellation will consist of 4408 satellites. Before Friday's launch, 2494 satellites had been launched; However, this figure includes more than 240 that have been retired, failed after deployment or rejected during in orbit testing. The addition of 53 other satellites brings the total number of launches to 2547.
Starlink is a space-based system that SpaceX has been building for many years to provide Internet access to underserved areas in the world. SpaceX, headquartered in Hawthorne, California, has hundreds of Starlink satellites that orbit the earth at an altitude of 340 miles (550 kilometers).