Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizens Wu Yanzu in South China for the delivery of clues! CTOnews.com, May 21, local time, SpaceX launched its second mission in two days, launching 21 near-Earth satellites for competitors OneWeb and Iridium (the first 22 chain satellites, and the third Axiom_Space Ax-2 mission, which will be launched on May 21).

It is worth mentioning that the last Iridium launch was in January 2019, which was also launched by SpaceX, which is another launch mission of the company after four years.

SpaceX Falcon 9, carrying 16 OneWeb satellites and five Iridium near-Earth satellites at 09:16 et, blasted off from the Vandenberg base space launch site 4e (SLC 4e) and landed at sea nine minutes later in the unmanned recovery ship "of course I still Love you".

According to Bharadvaj and mission description, the mission is the 11th launch and landing of the booster and the 193rd landing of a SpaceX orbital rocket.

According to reports, this launch is the 33rd mission of Falcon 9 in 2023. The mission is also the first time that SpaceX has used a single rocket to launch satellites for competitors OneWeb and Iridium at the same time, and this successful launch also marks SpaceX's 238th overall mission.

After today's launch, SpaceX will also complete the spacecraft's return recovery mission, which has launched another private mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The mission, carried out for Axiom Space, will send four astronauts to the International Space Station, where CTOnews.com will report in detail.

For OneWeb, the 15 satellites are operational spacecraft and one is a demonstration satellite. The satellite, known as Joeysat, is designed to test new technologies to see spacecraft adjust its communications beam to take into account direction, signal strength and customer needs.

The experimental spacecraft was funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the British Space Agency. Once today's satellites are put into use, OneWeb's low-Earth orbit constellation will increase to 634 satellites, marking the fourth launch by SpaceX for rival OneWeb.

Compared with OneWeb, Iridium Satellite commissioned the launch of only backup satellites, designed to add redundancy to the company's network. The network is made up of satellites that have been around for more than 20 years. After today's launch, Iridium will have 80 satellites in orbit, 14 of which are backup satellites.

It is worth mentioning that SpaceX again used a shorter nozzle on the Merlin 1D engine today. "the shortened nozzle made its debut in the Transporter 7 mission," Bharadvaj said. "it will continue to be used for tasks that do not require so much performance to reach the final destination."

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.