First up, on March 24 at 08:58 UTC, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Booster 1060 took off from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This nighttime launch put another sixty Starlink satellites in orbit for the Starlink L-22 mission. As of this launch, 1,323 of 1,440 first-phase Starlink satellites are in orbit. Two more launches are needed to complete the first phase.

For those of you keeping score at home: this was the sixth mission for the booster, and it was stated during the webcast that both of the fairings had flown on two previous missions each.

Booster 1060 successfully landed on the barge Of Course I Still Love You, which was stationed 663 kilometers downrange. Both fairing halves were recovered from the water by SpaceX’s new fairing recovery ship, the Shelia Bordelon. This massive ship has a heavy-duty crane and is capable of picking up two sets of fairings — that’s four fairing halves — out of the water in one trip, which will be useful when there are two launches in rapid succession because the recovery ship won’t have to return to port between launches. Ultimately, this will increase SpaceX’s capability to recover fairings from the water.

More Information

SpaceX mission page (archive)

Launch video