A Falcon 9 rocket, from the aeronautical company SpaceX, took off this Thursday morning from Florida, in the United States, with 56 Starlink satellites on board.
Liftoff took place at 4:32 a.m. local time, or 10:32 a.m. French time, from the SLC-40 launch pad at the Cape Canaveral launch site near the city of Orlando. He counted a slight delay of 10 minutes compared to the initial scheduled time.
This is the fifth such mission launched by SpaceX, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, since the beginning of the year. Starlink is the broadband Internet service provider of the American aerospace company.
Implement a satellite Internet network
The Starlink satellites carried by the rocket must be put into orbit to, according to the US company, “continue the deployment of the second-generation Internet constellation” started last December by SpaceX.
Currently, a network made up of 3773 satellites is already in orbit above the Earth. “Thousands” of other satellites are still to be sent in the “next few years,” according to SpaceX.
A SpaceX spacecraft will also take off on February 26 towards the International Space Station (ISS). The space mission will have four astronauts on board, two Americans, a Russian and an Emirati, who will be the first astronaut from an Arab country to spend six months in space.
Source: BFM TV
