SpaceX has begun the countdown to the new year, with the launch of the first of three rockets scheduled for 2024.
A Falcon nine rocket carrying 22 of the company’s Starlink satellites lifted off from the Vandenberg Space Station in California on Saturday (December 28). The project was presented at 8:48 p. m. EST (5:48 p. m. PST local time or 01:48 GMT on December 29) from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E).
The satellites were deployed into low-Earth orbit about 65 minutes later, as planned. This is the 132nd launch of SpaceX’s Falcon this year, and two more are planned for the next two days: a publicity communications satellite project and some other batch of Starlink satellites.
“We are now at 134 launches, two away from our last goal, to finish 2024 strong,” Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX vice president of launches, wrote on the Array social network, and an even better 2025!
Saturday’s Falcon Nine first level returned to Earth safely and landed on the “Of Course, I Still Love You” drone in the Pacific Ocean about 8 minutes after takeoff.
It was the 16th landing for this particular booster, according to a company mission description. Twelve of its 16 flights to date have been Starlink missions.
It was SpaceX’s 88th launch this year of Starlink broadband internet satellites, with just one failing due to an upper stage liquid oxygen leak.
“At the end of the day, there is only one number that matters. ZERO failures. Our priority is, and will remain, above all protection and reliability,” Dontchev wrote.
The Starlink megaconstellation, the largest ever assembled, currently includes about 6,700 active spacecraft, according to satellite tracker and astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell.
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Robert Pearlman is a local historian, journalist, and founder and editor-in-chief of CollectSPACE. com, a daily news publication and network faithful to the history of space, with a specific emphasis on how and where space exploration intersects with pop culture. . Pearlman also collaborates with Space. com and is co-author of “Space Stations: The Art, Science, and Reality of Working in Space,” published through Smithsonian Books in 2018. In 2009, he was inducted into the Hall Array of the U. S. Space Camp. U. S. Fame in Huntsville, Alabama. In 2021, he was revered through the American Astronautical Society with the Ordway Award for Sustained Excellence in the History of Spaceflight. In 2023, the National Space Club Florida committee identified Pearlman with the Kolcum News and Communications Award for excellence in telling the story of the area along the Space Coast and around the world.
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