The Flight Constituted The 6th Re-Use Of The First Stage Booster

On Sunday, October 18 at 8:25 a.m. EDT, 12:25 UTC, SpaceX launched 60 Starlink satellites from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The flight constituted the 6th re-use of the first stage booster, the 62nd launch of a Falcon and the 32nd time that a booster was recovered on the seaborne droneship, "Of Course I Still love You."

The early Sunday morning launch was the thirteenth Falcon 9 mission to deploy portions of the Starlink program and carried the designation of Starlink v1.0 L13. SpaceX is keeping up quite pace of Starlink launches in order to an initial operating capability said to require some 1440 sats.

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 three Starlink missions this year. Following stage separation, SpaceX landed Falcon 9’s first stage on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

Falcon 9’s fairing halves each previously supported two missions. The Starlink satellites deployed approximately 1 hour and 3 minutes after liftoff.

As the Starlink network is still in its early stages, the Starlink team continues to test the system, collecting latency data and performing speed tests of the service. The team also recently installed Starlinks on the Administrative Center building and about 20 private homes on the Hoh Tribe Reservation, located in a remote area of western Washington State where internet access is limited or completely unavailable.

FMI: www.spacex.com, www.starlink.com