Elon Musk-owned SpaceX has launched 54 more of its Starlink broadband satellites in orbit and landed a rocket on a ship at sea on Saturday night.
According to space.com, a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket, carrying 54 Starlink spacecraft, lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida Saturday at 11:41 p.m. EDT (0341 GMT) on August 28.
That was about 80 minutes later than initially planned, as SpaceX waited for some bad weather to clear.
A little less than nine minutes after launch, the Falcon 9's first stage came down to Earth for a landing on the SpaceX drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast.
Later, the upper stage of the Falcon 9 launched the Starlink satellites into space, eventually putting all 54 of them into low Earth orbit as intended roughly 15 minutes after takeoff.
"Squeezing extra performance out of Falcon 9 -- almost at 17 metric tons to an actual useful orbit with booster and fairing reusable!" Musk tweeted after the launch.
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As per the report, the most recent launch for SpaceX was the 38th of 2022, surpassing the company's previous record for most orbital missions in a calendar year. It was the year's 24th flight specifically focused on Starlink, SpaceX's massive broadband constellation.
