June 4 at 8:20 am E.T. from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station

Even if Dragon can’t get off the ground, SpaceX won’t stop launching. This morning just after sunrise the team lifted off a Falcon 9 rocket carrying twenty-two of their latest version 2 Starlink satellites. This mission marks the fourth launch of the sixth shell in the Starlink constellation that is slowly taking over the orbital planes across the globe. Drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas sat 637 km downrange in the Atlantic Ocean where Falcon 9 B1078 landed just eight minutes after blasting off. A newer booster in the launching fleet, B1078 has now only seen space three times. The first on the Crew-6 mission back in March of this year. Then just before the end of April she flew the mPOWER 3 & 4 mission. Once the booster is returned to shore it will be refurbished for another upcoming mission.

Starlink of course is SpaceX’s internet communications satellite constellation. These low Earth orbit satellites deliver high speed, low latency service to locations where ground based internet is slow, unreliable, or non existent. This mission boosts the total number now launched to that of four-thousand five-hundred and forty-two satellites. Of that number only four-thousand two-hundred and twenty are still in operation.

Previously SpaceX was able to launch fifty plus satellites per Falcon 9 launch, but these v2 Starlinks are larger, and more powerful. They are intended to be launched on SpaceX’s Starship super heavy launch vehicle, but is now forced to launch using Falcon 9s due to the delays with the Starship program. Little is known about these new satellites, but they weigh roughly 1,200 kilograms, and feature a twin solar array design which increases power delivered to the satellite. According to Elon Musk, SpaceX founder and CEO this new version will have an order of magnitude more bandwidth, higher speeds, and be roughly ten times better in every way.

Musk also stated that each of these satellites will have about two to four Megabytes of bandwidth per cell phone zone and will allow for tens of thousands of SMS text messages per second and will basically have the ability to act as cell towers, providing worldwide cell phone covrage to T-Mobile customers.