Elon Planet

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX aborted the launch of 60 new Starlink satellites at the last second today (March 15) due to an engine power issue with the mission's Falcon 9 rocket. The Falcon 9 rocket's onboard computer triggered an abort just before a scheduled 9:22 a.m. EDT (1322 GMT) liftoff after detecting an issue with one of its nine Merlin 1D engines. "Standing down today; standard auto-abort triggered due to out of family data during engine power check. Will announce next launch date opportunity once confirmed on the Range," SpaceX tweeted shortly after the abort.   The Falcon 9 first stage for this launch is a veteran SpaceX booster. The rocket has launched four flights for SpaceX. Its fifth launch for the Starlink mission would make it SpaceX's first to fly five times. The abort, coupled with an instantaneous launch window, meant that SpaceX engineers would not have time to try again today. The company is working with the U.S. Air Force and ...

    Image Credits :  @bygraphx   (See Full Tweet Click Here) Starlink is a satellite constellation being constructed by American company SpaceX to provide satellite Internet access. The constellation will consist of thousands of mass-produced small satellites, working in combination with ground transceivers. SpaceX also plans to sell some of the satellites for military, scientific, or exploratory purposes. Concerns have been raised about the long-term danger of space junk resulting from placing thousands of satellites in orbits above 1,000 kilometers (620 mi)  and a possible impact on astronomy, although SpaceX is reportedly attempting to solve the latter issue. The total cost of the decade-long project to design, build, and deploy the constellation was estimated by SpaceX in May 2018 to be about US$10 billion. Product development began in 2015, with the first two prototype test-flight satellites launched in February 2018. A second set o...