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| Image: SapceX |
SpaceX achieved it's 100th orbital launch of the year for its Falcon family of rockets late Saturday night in California. This first-time milestone was achieved by launching OneWeb's final batch of first-generation internet satellites.
The mission, named OneWeb Launch #20, lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 10:13 p.m. PDT on Saturday, Oct. 19 (1:13 a.m. EDT, 0513 UTC on Sunday, Oct. 20).
The Falcon 9 first stage booster (tail number B1082 in the SpaceX fleet) used for this mission completed it's 7th flight. In past it supported USSF-62 and five star link missions.
A little less than eight minutes, after liftoff. B1082 returned to Vandenberg for a propulsive touchdown at Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4). This made the 21st booster landing at LZ-4 and the 77th land landing for SpaceX to date.
The Falcon 9's upper stage continued hauling the 20 satellites to low Earth orbit. It will deploy them over a 20-minute span, starting 59 minutes after liftoff, if all goes to plan.
This mission concludes a very busy week for SpaceX, which also included the launches of it's Starship rocket, a Falcon heavy rocket and three other Falcon 9 rockets. In 2024, so far SpaceX has launched 98 Falcon 9 rockets and is set to launch it's 99th Falcon 9 rocket on October 21, Monday, for Starlink 6-61 mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
Eutelsat OneWeb's most recent collaborative mission with SpaceX took place May 20, 2023 brought the company's collection to 634 satellites. At that time Eutelsat OneWeb said that the new batch of 16 satellites would be enough to take their services global.
"OneWeb is on track to deliver global coverage this year and is already in the process of scaling services for customers around the world," company officials stated at the time. (The company was then known as OneWeb; the merger with Eutelsat occurred in September 2023.)