On Saturday, SpaceX successfully launched 52 Starlink satellites from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It was the 11th launch for the Falcon 9 first stage booster used in this mission. The booster was recovered on a drone ship in the Pacific.
With the completion of this mission, SpaceX has launched over 800 Stalink satellites during the course of 2021 and over 2,000 in total to date.
SpaceX also confirmed that it currently has over 100,000 active customers in more than 20 countries.
In addition, on Saturday, December 18, SpaceX also successfully launched the Turksat 5B mission to geostationary orbit. The mission was launched from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This was the 3rd launch and landing for the Falcon 9 booster.
Türksat 5B is a Turkish geostationary high-throughput (HTS) communications satellite of Türksat A.Ş. The Ka-band satellite offers a transmission capacity of over 55 Gbps via its multiple transponders. It uses the Eurostar-3000EOR satellite bus and has a mass of 4,500 kg.
