London, May 9 (HNA) – Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched on Sunday a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 60 Starlink satellites. The rocket, dubbed B1051, is the company’s first spacecraft to have made 10 flights.
The rocket was launched from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The flight marked the fourteenth SpaceX’s mission in 2021, and the second blast off of the week.
Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage rocket designed and manufactured by SpaceX for the reliable and safe transport of people and payloads into Earth orbit and beyond. Falcon 9 is the world’s first orbital class reusable rocket. Reusability allows SpaceX to refly the most expensive parts of the rocket, which in turn drives down the cost of space access.
Falcon 9’s first stage incorporates nine Merlin engines and aluminum-lithium alloy tanks containing liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene (RP-1) propellant. Falcon 9 generates more than 1.7 million pounds of thrust at sea level.
The second stage, powered by a single Merlin Vacuum Engine, delivers Falcon 9’s payload to the desired orbit. The second stage engine ignites a few seconds after stage separation, and can be restarted multiple times to place multiple payloads into different orbits.
The interstage is a composite structure that connects the first and second stages, and houses the pneumatic pushers that allow the first and second stage to separate during flight.
Falcon 9 is equipped with four hypersonic grid fins positioned at the base of the interstage. They orient the rocket during reentry by moving the center of pressure.
Made of a carbon composite material, the fairing protects satellites on their way to orbit. The fairing is jettisoned approximately 3 minutes into flight, and SpaceX continues to recover fairings for reuse on future missions.