The company said the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched on Sunday, January 24th, carrying a record number of satellites in space. The missile took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 10 a.m. (4 p.m. in Paris), 24 hours after the original scheduled time of its flight, which had been delayed due to bad weather.
Andy Tran, SpaceX official, said in a video accompanying the launch that the Falcon 9 was carrying 133 commercial and government satellites as well as 10 SpaceX satellites. “the biggest number” From satellites They were not deployed in a single mission., he added.
SpaceX flies on the Falcon 9 as part of a “rideshare” (co-launch) program in which small businesses pay Elon Musk’s group to bring their technology into space. In a series of tweets, SpaceX said that all 143 satellites had been posted.
The company founded by Elon Musk wants to put thousands of tiny satellites into orbit to form the constellation called “Starlink”, which aims to provide high-speed Internet from space.
But scientists also expressed concern about the number of objects orbiting the Earth. SpaceX says its satellites are designed to burn out in the atmosphere after a few years.