A Falcon 9 rocket lofted one other batch of satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink web service from California on Friday.

Liftoff from House Launch Advanced 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg House Drive Base occurred at 10:14 p.m. PST (1:14 a.m. EST, 0614 UTC on Saturday) after a two-day delay.

The Starlink 9-10 mission added one other 20 satellites to the rising megaconstellation in low Earth orbit. Amongst them are 13 satellites that embrace Direct-to-Cell capabilities. SpaceX confirmed a profitable payload deployment slightly greater than hour after launch.



The Falcon 9 first stage booster for this mission, tail quantity B1081 within the SpaceX fleet, was launching for an eleventh time. Its earlier missions included the launches of the Crew-7 astronaut mission to the Worldwide House Station, the CRS-29 cargo flight to the ISS, and NASA’s PACE mission.

As soon as it left the pad, the Falcon 9 rocket flew in a southeasterly trajectory alongside the coastlines of California and Mexico. Somewhat greater than eight minutes after liftoff, B1081 landed on the SpaceX droneship, ‘Of Course I Nonetheless Love You,’ which was positioned within the Pacific Ocean.

The 13 Starlink satellites on board the mission that includes DTC capabilities carry the overall variety of such satellites launched to 285. Following the latest launch of those satellites in late October, Ben Longmier, the senior director of satellite tv for pc engineering for SpaceX, mentioned the corporate was closing in finishing this preliminary section of the DTC Starlink constellation.

“We’ll proceed to launch and enhance the service after that so as to enhance the protection and latency for our accomplice telcos world wide,” Longmier mentioned in an Oct. 30 submit on X, previously Twitter. A few of these companions embrace T-Cell within the U.S., One New Zealand in New Zealand and Rogers in Canada.

As soon as this flight is within the books, he mentioned there might be simply 4 extra launches want to succeed in their aim.

Additionally in late October, Longmeir mentioned they performed the primary DTC checks in Japan.

First @Starlink Direct to Cell demo in Japan with our nice accomplice @official_kddi @au_official !!

The take a look at occurred on the island of Kumejima, Okinawa Prefecture, a really stunning place.

— Ben Longmier (@longmier) October 24, 2024