Achi news desk-
SpaceX had a busy Saturday night (March 30), launching two rockets from Florida less than five hours apart.
The action began at 5:52 pm EDT (2152 GMT) on Saturday, when a Falcon 9 rocket sent the Eutelsat 36D telecommunications satellite into the sky from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC).
Then, at 9:30 pm EDT (0130 GMT on Sunday, March 31), another Falcon 9 carried 23 of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband satellites up from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, which is next door to KSC.
And a third launch was also scheduled to take place on Saturday night – another Starlink mission, which was scheduled to take off from the Vandenberg Space Force Center in California during a four-hour window that opened at 10:30 pm EDT (7:30 pm time California; 0230 GMT on March 31). But SpaceX delayed that third mission due to bad weather.
Related: Starlink satellite train: How to see and track it in the night sky
The first two Falcon 9 stages launched on Saturday came back to Earth as planned, landing on SpaceX’s drone ships at sea about 8.5 minutes after liftoff. This was the 12th liftoff and landing for the Eutelsat 36D Falcon 9 and the 18th for the Starlink booster.
Eutelsat 36D was placed into geostationary transfer orbit approximately 34 minutes after launch. Once operational, the satellite will provide television broadcast services to customers in Europe, Russia and Africa, according to EverydayAstronaut.com.
The 23 Starlink satellites were placed into low Earth orbit as planned, joining more than 5,600 of their active broadband brethren up there.
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SpaceX already has experience with multi-launch days. Last month, for example, the company launched a batch of Starlink satellites, the USSF-124 classified mission for the United States Space Force and the IM-1 private lunar lander in less than 24 hours.
Saturday night’s retreat was the 30th and 31st orbital launches of the year for SpaceX. The company plans to conduct 144 orbital missions this year, SpaceX representatives said.
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