SpaceX successfully launched 46 of the company’s own Starlink broadband Internet communications satellites from Florida on Monday.
The mission, Starlink 4-8, was the first since the company lost about 40 of the Starlink satellites on Feb. 4 during a solar storm that thickened the air and caused the satellites to burn up as they crashed back through the atmosphere.
The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off as planned at 9:44 a.m. EST into a sunny, blue sky from Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station near Kennedy Space Center.
SpaceX canceled a previous attempt planned on Sunday due to weather concerns that could have had an impact on the recovery of the rocket’s first stage booster on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean.
The company recovered that booster successfully after Monday’s launch on the robotic barge, A Shortfall of Gravitas.
The booster previously was used to launch astronauts on the Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station in May 2020, as well as five earlier Starlink missions, a cargo mission to the space station and three other satellite missions.
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