Falcon 9’s First Stage Landed On The Droneship For Its Fifth Time

On Friday, August 7 at 1:12 a.m. EDT, 5:12 UTC, SpaceX launched its tenth Starlink mission, which included 57 Starlink satellites and 2 satellites from BlackSky, a Spaceflight customer.

Falcon 9’s first stage previously supported Crew Dragon’s first demonstration mission to the International Space Station, launch of the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, and the fourth and seventh Starlink missions.

Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage landed on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

The BlackSky Global spacecraft deployed sequentially beginning 1 hour and 1 minute after liftoff, and the Starlink satellites deployed approximately 1 hour and 33 minutes after liftoff.

All Starlink satellites on this flight are equipped with a deployable visor to block sunlight from hitting the brightest spots of the spacecraft – a measure SpaceX has taken as part of their work with leading astronomical groups to mitigate satellite reflectivity. They're accomplishing this by adding a deployable visor to the satellite to block sunlight from hitting the brightest parts of the spacecraft.

All future Starlink satellites will have sun visors. Additionally, information about satellites' orbits are located on space-track.org to facilitate observation scheduling for astronomers.

FMI: www.spacex.com