Elon Musk’s SpaceX achieved yet another milestone on February 21. It has successfully landed a Falcon 9 rocket back on Earth for the 100th time after deploying its payload into orbit. The rocket was launched from Florida, US, at 8:14 pm IST, carrying 46 Starlink satellites.
About nine minutes later, the rocket’s first stage (booster) returned to Earth for a vertical touchdown on a SpaceX drone ship, A Shortfall of Gravitas (ASOG), stationed a few hundred kilometers off the Florida coast. The successful return marked the 100th time SpaceX has been able to recover Falcon 9’s first stage for future reuse.
SpaceX has created history by launching the world’s first orbital-class rocket capable of re-flight. Named Falcon 9, the rocket made its first test flight in June 2010. With Falcon 9 and its reusability, the Elon Musk-owned company is able to offer lower-cost options to companies wanting to gain access to space. So far, SpaceX has carried out 140 launches of the Falcon 9 and landed 100 of them.
With the latest launch, SpaceX also inched closer to its goal of offering low-latency broadband Internet service across the globe. An hour after the launch, the company confirmed the deployment of Starlink satellites in a tweet.