Liftoff of the Starlink 6-58 mission from Space Launch Complex 40 occurred at 8:53 PM EDT (00:53 UTC), marking SpaceX’s 34th dedicated Starlink launch in 2024. The Falcon 9 first stage, identified as B1073 and on its 15th mission, it has already supported major missions such as ispace’s HAKUTO-R lunar lander launch and SpaceX’s CRS-27 commercial resupply mission. The SpaceX satellites, thanks to this latest addition of 23 units, as reported by astronomer and orbital tracker Jonathan McDowell, they reached the extraordinary number of 5999 devices.
Just eight minutes after liftoff, B1073 successfully landed on SpaceX’s floating platform, called ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’. The exceptional nature of this launch, carried out on a weekend that was scene of intense solar activity with the largest geomagnetic storm in the last 20 years and which gave fans auroras and pink skies in Italy too, was also underlined by Elon Musk himself. In a post that appeared on X, the visionary entrepreneur, communicated that SpaceX was closely monitoring the impact of the solar storms on the Starlink constellation, highlighting the relevance of these dynamics in outer space and revealing how the network actually suffered from degraded service.
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