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SpaceX Launches 60 More Starlink Internet Satellites from Cape Canaveral

posted by Fnord666 on Monday October 26 2020, @03:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the the-inconceivable-has-become-commonplace dept.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

SpaceX launches 60 more Starlink internet satellites from Cape Canaveral:

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched 60 more Starlink internet relay satellites on Saturday, boosting the total number launched to date to 895 as the company builds out a planned constellation of thousands designed to provide global high-speed broadband service.

Running two days late because of an on-board camera issue, the Falcon 9's twice-flown first stage thundered to life at 11:31 a.m. EDT, pushing the 229-foot-tall rocket away from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It was the California rocket builder's 19th launch so far this year and its 15th Starlink flight.

[...] With Saturday's launch, SpaceX has put 895 Starlinks into orbit, 180 of them — more satellites than any other company owns — in less than three weeks.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2020, @09:22PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2020, @09:22PM (#1069069)

    I agree it's not trivial. Since a satellite's orbital place and velocity are pretty much constant, its exact position at any point in time is known before launch though. If you have a recorded velocity profile of your rocket, you can calculate where to exactly aim it at before launch. Your flight computer just needs to make some minor course corrections due to atmospheric conditions, which should become negligible by the time of burnout.

    A modern commercial drone seems to be able to cope fine with wind throwing it off course. Would it work well enough for a rocket going much faster and effectively moving in 3D space instead of just the XY needed for keeping a drone in position over ground? I don't know, but GPS should work all the way up.

    I have not played Kerbal Space Program but I hear it's not *terribly* hard, so not sure if "rocket science" carries the same connotation as it used to in the days of Apollo :)

    I for one would welcome some nightly fireworks as a compensation for having all my night sky pics ruined.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by PiMuNu on Tuesday October 27 2020, @07:25AM

    by PiMuNu (3823) on Tuesday October 27 2020, @07:25AM (#1069214)

    > I have not played Kerbal Space Program but I hear it's not *terribly* hard

    LOL. Thanks for the informed comment.