SpaceX launches 21 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit

Sept. 12 (UPI) -- Riding atop a fuel cell filled with a million pounds of liquid kerosene, SpaceX launched 21 Starlink communications satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 6:45 p.m. PDT Thursday, the latest in a series of SpaceX launches.

This was the 62nd Starlink launch this year, bringing the total number of missions to 125 as Starlink builds out its constellation of satellites, with more than 6,400 now in orbit.

SpaceX later confirmed the orbitals' deployment on X.

Thirteen of the satellites that were deployed into low-Earth orbit are equipped with Direct-to-Cell technology, which allows phone users to connect to satellite communications anywhere on the planet, regardless of the availability of cell service. Two-hundred-and-seventeen satellites in orbit currently feature that technology.

This was the 18th flight for the first-stage fuel booster, which landed about 8 minutes after launch on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship, which was stationed in the Pacific Ocean. It was the 101st time that droneship has been used to land a first stage booster rocket.

The Falcon 9 Starlink launches have become almost routine for SpaceX, but Thursday evening's mission from California followed the first ever commercial spacewalk, also a SpaceX mission, as part of the company's Polaris Dawn mission, hours earlier.