SpaceX had its third launch of Starlink satellites from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
Following stage separation, SpaceX will land Falcon 9’s first stage on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. Approximately 45 minutes after liftoff, SpaceX’s fairing recovery vessel, “Ms. Tree,” will attempt to recover a payload fairing half.
Successful deployment of 60 Starlink satellites confirmed! pic.twitter.com/hA8eUp7dNI
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 7, 2020
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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The black painted one is now Starlink 1130 (DARKSAT) on TLE’s if anyone wants to compare visibility themselves when the train rolls through your part of sky.
No, but soon. USA has like 320.
Including countries?
If you count artificial meteor showers due to reentry of dead sats to be entertainment…
Amazon doenst have approval to lauch any satelites at this point and its looking like they will have to wait for round 2.
https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-user-terminal-flat-round-ufo-stick-elon-musk-2020-1
Yep, at the root of this space revolution, is the simple fact that crewed space companies and projects can start becoming fully self funded, with the help of one or another space investments.
Up to now, any crewed space efforts had to be heavily supported by public funding and subject to political and electoral vagaries.
Yeah, I haven’t forgotten Spaceship Two. Which was a brave effort, but I’m talking about Mercury/Apollo/Shuttle level projects that go to orbit or to another planetary body.
Without a track of successful launches across several years like SpaceX? Unlikely.
Blue Origin still has to do all the heavy lifting concerning the goal of having a reliable, tested launcher.
anyone know if there’s a planned (or rumored) entertainment future use of the Starlink sat system?
Something to consider – right now there are about 2,000 operational satellites in orbit around the Earth. If SpaceX can pull off another Starlink 19 launches this year that will give them ~1,300 total by the end of the year; by the middle of 2021 Starlink should have more satellites than everyone else put together. Granted, there is a small chance that Blue Origin could surprise everyone and start launching Amazon’s proposed satellite constellation at a super fast rate.
Do you think it might be enough to get the public to accept realistic expectations ?
This is what I am excited about. They should be able to complete Starship development and begin Mars missions. Building a Mars base will take a lot of specialized hardware and that takes a lot of R&D money.
With ~180, I believe SpaceX is now the biggest satellite owner in the world.
Once Starlink goes operational, imagine what SpaceX will be able to accomplish with that revenue stream.
Good. The more common and mundane space launches become, the better.
And SpaceX makes this look easy. It isn’t.
Also good to be able to tell clients that a 4th launch is good (“hey we use it for our own launches”).
Yes, 4th. 3/4 of possible savings already achieved.
Good booster landing (4th for that one?) but the fairing catch was another swing and a miss…
No mention if they’ll fish them out of the water but probably…