A rocket launched by SpaceX in Florida could be seen from Puerto Rico

Private company SpaceX will launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Monday to carry second-generation Starlink communications satellites into space, “providing even faster speeds to more users,” the company announced.

SpaceX launched a reusable Falcon 9 rocket carrying 21 second-generation Starlink satellites without major mishaps from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The launch took place as scheduled at 6:13 pm (7:13 local time).

After separation, the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage returned to Earth 8 minutes after liftoff and landed on an unmanned platform “A Shortfall of Gravitas” parked in the Atlantic Ocean.

Since first being licensed to operate the first-generation Starlink network, SpaceX has launched nearly 4,000 satellites and delivered high-speed Internet to more than a million locations around the world, most of them homes, the company said. Musk.

“SpaceX is rapidly keeping up with the growing demand for connectivity in the United States and around the world, particularly in some areas where broadband connections were previously the only option,” the company said.

“With the recent approval of our second-generation or ‘Gen 2’ network, SpaceX will bring even faster speeds to more users,” he added.

This new authorization allows SpaceX to launch an additional, greatly improved spacecraft with significantly higher throughput per satellite than first-generation systems.

“For the end consumer, this means more bandwidth and more reliability,” says the space agency.

According to Space.com, SpaceX is authorized to launch 12,000 satellites.

While most satellite Internet services come from satellites orbiting about 35,000 kilometers away, the Starlink constellation is much closer to Earth, about 550 kilometers away, allowing it to reduce the time it takes for data to travel back and forth between users, the company explains. and satellite.