A new group of Starlink satellites are circling the Earth after an early Saturday morning (July 26) launch from Florida.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 5:01 a.m. EDT (0901 GMT) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The booster’s upper stage reached a preliminary orbit about nine minutes after leaving the ground.
The 28 broadband internet satellites (group 10-26) were released into low Earth orbit about an hour into the flight.
“Deployment of 28 Starlink satellites confirmed,” SpaceX confirmed on the social media network X.
The launch is the first of two Starlink missions planned for the day. SpaceX has scheduled a second launch with 24 satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 8:55 p.m. PDT local (11:55 p.m. EDT or 0355 GMT on July 27).
As planned, the Falcon 9’s first stage separated from the upper stage at about 2 minutes into the ascent and then performed a propulsive return to Earth, firing one of its engines to land on “A Shortfall of Gravitas,” an autonomous droneship stationed in the Atlantis Ocean. The booster (B1078) completed its 22nd flight.
The launch came two days after the Starlink network experienced a 2.5-hour outage, affecting customers across the globe. The problem was traced back to a “failure of key internal software services that operate the core network,” according to an update posted to the Starlink account on the X social media network.
“The network issue has been resolved, and Starlink service has been restored. We understand how important connectivity is and apologize for the disruption,” SpaceX officials wrote.
Saturday’s launch raised the total of active Starlink satellites in orbit past 8,000. SpaceX is currently licensed to deploy 12,000 of the relay units.