American aerospace manufacturer SpaceX has launched a Falcon 9 rocket which carried 49 Starlink satellites into orbit for the company’s internet satellite constellation system from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida at 1:13 p.m. EST. After around nine minutes of the launch, the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage landed safely on the SpaceX drone ship, placed in the Atlantic Ocean. It was the sixth landing for this booster, whose previous launches were the Crew-1 and Crew-2 astronaut-carrying missions to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA.
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The upper stage carried the Starlinks to low Earth orbit, where they were posted as planned after 15 minutes and 30 seconds of the launch. This new set of Starlinks, known as Group 4-7, will join over 1,800 functional satellites in the constellation. This was the 3rd Starlink launch of the year 2022. SpaceX is moving quickly to build out its constellation and expand it into rural areas to improve internet services.