Media
Transcript
On Thursday, June 4th at 01:25 am UTC, SpaceX launched yet another batch of sixty Starlink satellites on board a Falcon 9 from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
This marks the seventh batch of version 1.0 Starlinks. Notable about this batch is the fact that one of the satellites is testing a sun visor that should make the satellite significantly less visible by blocking sunlight from hitting the brightest parts of the spacecraft. If successful, this could be a standard feature on future Starlink satellites, which would help make them less of a nuisance to astronomers and astrophotographers.
Another notable thing about this launch is the fact that the video link for the barge did not drop out just before landing like every other time a booster has landed on a barge.
This launch was the 89th Falcon 9 launch overall and this first stage is the first Block 5 Falcon 9 to make five successful landings and the first to land on the Just Read The Instructions drone ship since it was moved to the east coast.
For those of you keeping track at home, neither Ms. Tree nor Ms. Chief made a successful catch. Both fairings were recovered from the water, with the one that Ms. Tree carried back to shore broken into two pieces.
To wrap things up, here’s a running tally of a few spaceflight statistics for the current year:
Toilets currently in space: 4
Toilets burned up: 2
Total satellites humans put into orbit: 474 (includes those launched from other in-orbit craft, such as the ISS)
Total satellites from launches: 458
Total 2020 launch attempts: 40 (including 5 failures)
I keep track of orbital launches by where they launched from. Here’s that breakdown:
USA: 14
China: 12
Kazakhstan: 4
Russia: 3
French Guiana: 2
Japan: 2
Iran: 2
New Zealand: 1
Your useless space fact for the week is that Buzz Aldrin’s mother’s maiden name was “Moon”.
Learn More
Credits
Host: Annie Wilson
Writers: Annie Wilson, Dave Ballard, Ally Pelphrey
Audio and Video Editing: Ally Pelphrey
Content Editing by Beth Johnson
Executive Producer: Pamela Gay
Intro and Outro music by Kevin MacLeod, https://incompetech.com/music/
We record most shows live, on Twitch. Follow us today to get alerts when we go live.