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Updated · Spaceflight Now · Jul 13SpaceX Launches 27 Starlink Satellites, Lands Falcon 9 Booster on 637th Recovery
3 articles · Updated · Spaceflight Now · Jul 13Summary
- Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg at 6:28 p.m. PDT carrying 27 Starlink V2 Mini satellites on the Starlink 15-14 mission.
- B1093 landed about eight minutes later on droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific, marking its 15th flight.
- The recovery was the 210th landing on that droneship and SpaceX's 637th booster landing overall.
- More than 10,700 Starlink spacecraft are already in orbit, and the new batch expands SpaceX's low Earth orbit broadband network.
Insights
Starlink faces an 'existential risk' from space debris. How close are we to a cascade event that wipes it out? With China's reusable rockets now flying, is the new space race for control of low Earth orbit already over? As thousands of satellites burn up, are we running an unstoppable geoengineering experiment in our own atmosphere?