The huge spacecraft, called BlueBirds, lifted off today (Sept. 12) at 4:52 a.m. EDT (0852 GMT) atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth about 7.5 minutes later, making a vertical touchdown at Cape Canaveral's Landing Zone 1. It was the 13th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.
The Falcon 9's upper stage carried the BlueBird satellites into low Earth orbit as planned and successfully deployed them over a 14-minute stretch beginning about 54 minutes after liftoff.
Each BlueBird sports a communications antenna that covers 693 square feet (64 square meters) when unfolded — the largest such array ever deployed by a commercial spacecraft.
The five 3,300-pound (1,500 kilograms) BlueBirds tie that record, actually. It was set by AST SpaceMobile's BlueWalker 3, a prototype that launched to orbit aboard a Falcon 9 in September 2022. But the BlueBirds are operational satellites, the founding members of a commercial constellation designed to beam service directly to cell phones.
Source: www.space.com
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