SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket streaks into orbit with 49 more Starlink internet satellites. Credit: Michael Cain / Spaceflight Now / Coldlife Photography
A package of 49 Starlink satellites that rode a Falcon 9 rocket into orbit Tuesday night from Florida included the 2,000th spacecraft to launch into SpaceX’s broadband internet network.
The successful orbital deployment of SpaceX’s newest 49 satellites brought the total number of Starlink spacecraft built and launched to 2,042, including prototypes and testbeds no longer in service.
Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, tweeted Saturday that the company has 1,469 active Starlink satellites, plus 272 spacecraft still maneuvering to their operational orbits. He added the laser inter-satellite links, used to beam internet traffic from spacecraft to spacecraft without going through a ground station, will activate soon.
More than 200 Starlink satellites have failed or been decommissioned. Some of those Starlink spacecraft were earlier models, either used as test versions or obsolete.
The latest Starlink mission was the 35th dedicated Falcon 9 launch to build out the network.
The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) launcher lifted off from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 9:02:40 p.m. EST Tuesday (0202:40 GMT Wednesday) and climbed into moonlit sky, arcing downrange toward the southeast over the Atlantic Ocean.
A Falcon 9 rocket transits the moon Tuesday night. Credit: SpaceX
The mission was originally supposed to take off Monday night, but SpaceX delayed the flight by a day to wait for improved weather conditions at the Falcon 9 booster’s offshore recovery site near the Bahamas.
SpaceX bypassed another launch opportunity at 7:04 p.m. EST Tuesday without explanation, and instead targeted a backup launch slot at 9:02 p.m.
Nine Merlin engines ramped up to full throttle, generating 1.7 million pounds of thrust, to power the Falcon 9 off the launch pad.
A high-magnification night-vision tracking camera showed the rocket’s first stage shutting down its engines two-and-a-half minutes into the mission. The booster stage jettisoned moments later, and the second stage lit its Merlin engine with a puff of exhaust to continue the climb into orbit.
The first stage followed a parabolic trajectory, briefly soaring above the atmosphere beyond the edge of space before plunging back to Earth for a propulsive landing on SpaceX’s drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas” around 400 miles (650 kilometers) southeast of Cape Canaveral near the Bahamas.
The on-target landing completed the 10th flight of the booster used on Tuesday night’s mission. The booster — tail number B1060 — debuted on June 30, 2020, with the launch of a U.S. military GPS navigation satellite.
The booster has sent 487 satellites toward space on its 10 missions, and the successful landing Tuesday night give the rocket a chance for an 11th flight once the drone ship returns to Port Canaveral. SpaceX has now flown four of its reusable boosters at least 10 times, with one rocket already logging 11 missions.
The Falcon 9’s upper stage delivered its 49 Starlink satellites payloads into orbit nearly nine minutes after liftoff Tuesday night.
The rocket passed out of range of SpaceX’s ground stations before releasing the satellites, so ground teams were unable to confirm the deployment event until the Falcon 9 flew around the world and back over a tracking site in Alaska around 10:30 p.m. EST (0330 GMT).
Telemetry relayed through the Kodiak Island site indicated the 49 Starlink satellites had separated into orbit close to the intended altitude and inclination. The target orbit ranged in altitude between 130 miles and 210 miles (210 by 339 kilometers), with an inclination of 53.2 degrees to the equator.
An infrared tracking camera showed spectacular views of main engine cutoff, stage separation, and second stage ignition two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Watch live: https://t.co/lRbPiUzMJSpic.twitter.com/hdnZmKbbxO
The confirmation of satellite separation wrapped up the third Falcon 9 launch of the year, following missions Jan. 6 and Jan. 13 from Florida’s Space Coast with an earlier batch of Starlink satellite and the Transporter 3 small satellite rideshare flight.
Tuesday night’s mission, officially named Starlink 4-6, clears the way for two more SpaceX launches from Florida on Jan. 27 and Jan. 29, carrying an Italian radar remote sensing satellite and another group of Starlink spacecraft, respectively.
SpaceX has a long-term plan to launch as many as 42,000 Starlink satellites, according to a company filing with the International Telecommunication Union. The company’s initial focus is on deploying thousands of satellites into five orbital “shells.”
The 53.2-degree inclination shell, the target for Tuesday night’s launch, is one of the five orbital shells at different inclination angles that SpaceX plans to fill with around 4,400 satellites to provide high-speed, low-latency broadband connectivity around the world. The first shell, at 53.0 degrees, was filled with its full complement of satellites last May.
To space and back for a 10th time!
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster stage — numbered 1060 in the reusable rocket fleet — has completed its 10th mission after landing on SpaceX’s drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas.https://t.co/lRbPiUzMJSpic.twitter.com/Y0cOY5BybY
As of earlier the month, SpaceX said the Starlink network is now live in 25 countries and regions, serving more than 145,000 users worldwide. SpaceX builds its Starlink satellites on an assembly line in Redmond, Washington, and the company is developing and iterating its own user terminals.
SpaceX hopes to use revenue from the Starlink business unit to help fund the company’s ambitions to complete development of the heavy-lift Starship rocket, a massive fully reusable launcher designed to eventually replace the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.
The 49 Starlink satellites launched Tuesday night — each about a quarter-ton in mass — will unfurl solar panels and use ion thrusters to climb to an operational altitude of 335 miles (540 kilometers).
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
