Every weekend, an image that made the news or caught our attention. On July 12, the B1058 stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launcher returned to Port Canaveral, Florida, after its… sixteenth flight.
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The American flag and logos NASA affixed to its sides are still present, but less and less visible: it is obviously even more blackened than the first stage B1058 of the Falcon 9 of SpaceX appeared on July 12 at the entrance to the port of Port Canaveralin Florida.
The photo was taken by American photographer Jerry Pikedrone pilot certified by the FAAand shared on Twitter.
Two days earlier, the launcher had launched from the nearby military base of Cape Canaveraland had succeeded in its… sixteenth mission since May 2020 (launch of the Demo 2 mission to the international space stationwith American astronauts Doug Hurley And Bob Behnken piloting the capsule for the first time Crew Dragon).
The Californian operator’s objective is to demonstrate that the first stage of its workhorse can be used and recovered 20 times.
The mission of July 10, the 44th of the year for the Falcon 9, made it possible to place in low orbit the batch n°6-5 of “house” satellites star link for’global internet (in their 2.1 Mini version).
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Six days later, on July 16 at 3:50 UTC, still from the Cape Canaveral base, another Falcon 9 took off, also with a first stage already used 15 times, the B1060, in service since June 2020 (launch of a navigation satellite GPS III on behalf of the US military).
This time, the last batch of Starlink v1.5 satellites was on board, bringing the number of satellites in the constellation deployed since May 2019 to almost 4,800…
