SpaceX said it achieved a double launch day last Sunday, sending up a Falcon 9 rocket topped with the Starlink spacecraft from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Four hours later it blasted off another Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The Cape Canaveral launch lifted 23 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit as part of Starlink’s 5,600+ satellite mega constellation. Meanwhile on the West Coast, 20 Starlink V2 Mini satellites, including 13 featuring Direct-to-Cell capabilities, rocketed skyward.
The V2 mini satellite has four times the capacity of the previous generation of Starlink satellites, with 165 terabits-per-second. SpaceX reportedly has said it plans to launch around two thousand V2 mini satellites.
SpaceX plans 144 orbital launches in 2024. A total of 42,000 LEO satellites are scheduled to become part of Starlink mega constellation.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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