CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – After multiple days of weather delays from hurricanes ravaging the Atlantic Ocean, a SpaceX Falcon 9 finally lifted off Monday night, Oct 13, to successfully deliver the third batch of Project Kuiper internet satellites to LEO for Amazon.
Liftoff of SpaceX Falcon 9 took place at 9:58 p.m. EDT (0158 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) on the KF-03 mission carrying 24 Project Kuiper satellites.
They were all successfully deployed starting 56 minutes after liftoff and lasted about eight minutes.
The Falcon 9 first stage booster B1091.2 launched and landed for a second time. It previously launched the KF-02 mission.
The booster will eventually be used as a Falcon Heavy core booster
B1091 successfully performed an autonomous landing on the ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas,’ droneship ASOG some eight minutes after liftoff.
This counts as the 138th landing on ASOG and the 517th booster landing to date.
Overall this is the sixth mission supporting the Project Kuiper constellation involving three launches onboard the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rockets and now three aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets.
Altogether the Kuiper satellite constellation consists of a total of 153 in LEO with a planned constellation of over 3000.
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