SpaceX roars back to orbit barely two weeks after in-flight anomaly
Enlarge / The Starlink 10-9 mission lifts off early Saturday morning from Florida. (credit: SpaceX webcast)
Early on Saturday morning, at 1:45 am local time, a Falcon 9 rocket soared into orbit from its launch site at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
By some measures this was an extremely routine mission-it was, after all, SpaceX's 73rd launch of this calendar year. And like many other Falcon 9 launches this year, the "Starlink 10-9" mission carried 23 of the broadband Internet satellites into orbit. However, after a rare failure earlier this month, this particular Falcon 9 rocket was making a return-to-flight for the company and attempting to get the world's most active booster back into service.
And by all measures, it performed. The first stage booster, B-1069, made its 17th flight into orbit before landing on the Just Read the Instructions drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Then, a little more than an hour after liftoff, the rocket's second stage released its payload into a good orbit, from which the Starlink spacecraft will use its on-board thrusters to reach operational altitudes in the coming weeks.