SpaceX added 23 more satellites to its Starlink web constellation on Saturday night (Dec. 2).
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the communications satellites lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 11:00 p.m. EST (0400 GMT on Dec. 3).
Related: Starlink satellite train: Tips on how to see and track it within the night sky
The Falcon 9’s first stage got here back to Earth for a vertical landing about 8.5 minutes after launch. It touched down on the droneship “A Shortfall of Gravitas,” which was stationed within the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast.
It was the sixth launch and landing for this particular booster, based on a SpaceX mission description.
The 23 Starlink satellites, meanwhile, were scheduled to deploy from the Falcon 9’s upper stage into low Earth orbit (LEO) about 65.5 minutes after liftoff.
The Starlink network, which beams web service all the way down to people world wide, already features greater than 5,000 operational spacecraft, based on astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.
But that number keeps growing, and certain will far into the long run. SpaceX already has permission to deploy 12,000 Starlink craft into LEO, and it has applied for approval for one more 30,000 on top of that.