Brand-new Falcon 9 rocket sends 23 Starlink satellites to orbit on SpaceX’s 2nd launch of the day

SpaceX sent another batch of Starlink satellites to orbit tonight (April 28), its second liftoff of the day.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 Starlink broadband satellites — including 13 with direct-to-cell capability — lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida tonight at 10:34 p.m. EDT (0234 GMT on April 29).

It was the second Starlink group to fly today; a Falcon 9 lofted 27 of the internet craft from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base earlier today.

Tonight’s launch marked the first-ever liftoff for this particular Falcon 9’s first stage. That’s a rarity for SpaceX, which is known for its rocket reuse; one of the company’s Falcon 9 boosters has 27 flights under its belt.

The Falcon 9 should fly again; it aced its landing tonight, coming down on the SpaceX drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship” in the Atlantic Ocean about eight minutes after liftoff.

The rocket’s upper stage continued carrying the 23 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO), where they’re scheduled to be deployed 65 minutes after launch.

Related: Starlink satellite train: how to see and track it in the night sky

Tonight’s launch was the 50th Falcon 9 liftoff of the year already. Thirty-three of those missions have been devoted to building out the Starlink network, the largest satellite constellation ever assembled.

The megaconstellation currently harbors more than 7,200 operational spacecraft, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, and it’s growing all the time.

Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to state that SpaceX’s first Starlink launch of the day occurred from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base. The original version incorrectly said it launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.