| Advertisement |
April 25 (UPI) -- SpaceX on Tuesday delayed its latest effort to populate the low Earth orbit with Internet communication satellites. The company announced on Twitter that the launch of 46 new Starlink satellites, originally scheduled for Tuesday morning would be delayed 24 hours as it was now targeting a launch window of 9:40 a.m. EDT on Wednesday from the Vandenberg Space Station in California.
Advertisement
Following the eventual launch, SpaceX will attempt to land the first stage of the reusable Falcon 9 rocket on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" in the Pacific Ocean.
If successful it will mark the 13th launch and landing for this Falcon 9 booster, two short of the company's record.
The upper stage of the Falcon 9 is then expected to continue to travel into space where it will deploy the satellites about an hour after the launch.
The launch will mark the 26th orbital mission for SpaceX in 2023.
Last week, SpaceX successfully launched 21 second-generation Starlink satellites into orbit.
That batch of satellites was originally supposed to be carried into orbit by SpaceX's Starship rocket but the spacecraft, which is ultimately meant to carry people and cargo to the moon and beyond, was not yet ready.
Starship exploded 24 miles above the Gulf of Mexico during a test launch the day after the most recent Starlink launch. The explosion shook home in South Texas' Rio Grande Valley area and spread debris for miles around Port Isabel, Texas, locals complained.
The Starlink satellites were created to deliver broadband Internet service to remote or underserved locations around the world. Some scientists, though, have complained that so many satellites could prevent other science space observations.
