SpaceX wasn’t grounded for long.
The company launched 23 of its Starlink broadband satellites from NASA‘s Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a Falcon 9 rocket on Saturday (July 27) at 1:45 a.m. EDT (0545 GMT).
It was SpaceX‘s first liftoff since July 11, when a Falcon 9 suffered an upper-stage failure that led to the loss of 20 Starlink spacecraft.
The Falcon 9’s first stage returned to Earth on Saturday about eight minutes after launch as planned. It made a vertical touchdown on SpaceX’s Just Read the Instructions drone ship, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
It was the 17th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. Thirteen of its flights have been Starlink missions.
The rocket’s upper stage, meanwhile, continued hauling the 23 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO). It deployed them right on schedule, about 63 minutes after launch, SpaceX confirmed via X.
The July 11 failure resulted from a leak of liquid oxygen, which prevented the Falcon 9’s upper stage from performing an orbit-raising burn as planned. SpaceX’s anomaly investigation found the likely cause of that leak — a crack in a line for a pressure sensor in the liquid-oxygen system.
Source: https://www.space.com/spacex-return-to-flight-falcon-9-launch-starlink
