A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched another 60 Starlink satellites on February 17, 2020 at 3:05 PM (UTC). For those of you keeping track at home, SpaceX has now launched 180 satellites in the first two months of this year.

This time around, none of these satellites had the experimental darkening treatment. SpaceX had previously announced the results of that experiment would not be available until the end of this month.  When I know the results, I’ll share them with you.

The was the  80th successful flight and was supposed to be the 50th successful recovery of the first stage, but that milestone will have to wait for the next recovery attempt.  It was not a good day for recovery for SpaceX: the first stage made a “soft landing” in the water next to Of Course I Still Love You, and both GO Ms. Tree and GO Ms. Chief missed the fairings.

I really don’t have a whole lot to say about the Starlink satellites, because, well, it’s Starlink.  SpaceX seems to be aiming for a two week turnaround between launches, which just feels exhausting.

More Information

• Fairing Recovery Attempts (SpaceX Fleet Updates) https://www.spacexfleet.com/fairing-data
• Droneship Landing Attempts (SpaceX Fleet Updates) https://www.spacexfleet.com/droneship-data
• SpaceX Starlink (Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starlink#List_of_launches
• Starlink-5 (Rocket Launch Live) https://www.rocketlaunch.live/launch/starlink-5