SpaceX's 200th Falcon 9 rocket launch looks absolutely gorgeous in these photos - Space.com
SpaceX's 200th Falcon 9 rocket launch looks absolutely gorgeous in these photos - Space.com
Feb 03, 202351 secs
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket notched its 200th successful orbital mission on Thursday (Feb. 2), and the company marked the milestone by sharing some stunning photos of the spaceflight action.A Falcon 9 lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Thursday morning, carrying 53 of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites skyward.The two-stage rocket's reusable first stage came back for a landing — the fifth overall for that particular booster — on the SpaceX drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas just under nine minutes after launch.SpaceX celebrated the success of the mission — its eighth of 2023 already — a few hours later via Twitter(opens in new tab), posting three dazzling photos of the Falcon 9 in flight.That number will continue to grow for quite some time; SpaceX already has permission to loft 12,000 Starlink spacecraft, and the company has applied for approval to deploy 30,000 more satellites on top of that.Mike Wall is the author of " Out There(opens in new tab)" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life.