SpaceX launches 143 satellites

• SpaceX successfully launched its ambitious rideshare mission called Transporter-1, carrying 143 small satellites, and created a new record of launching many satellites from a single rocket.
• With this launch, SpaceX broke the record set by ISRO in February 2017 for deploying 104 satellites onboard PSLV in a single mission.

Which satellites were launched?

• The 143 satellites that were launched include the commercial and government satellites namely the CubeSats, microsats and 10 Starlink satellites.
• A spacecraft of Nasa was also launched.

Aim of the launch

• SpaceX has launched these satellites with the aim of providing the near-global broadband internet coverage all across the world by the end of 2021.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX)

• It is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company.
• It has been headquartered in Hawthorne, California. The agency was founded in the year 2002 by Elon Musk.
• The agency was established with the goal to reduce the space transportation costs in order to enable the colonization of Mars.
• It is the first privately funded liquid-propellant rocket of the world that has reached to the orbit by the launch of Falcon 1 in 2008.

Falcon 9 rocket

• This rocket is a partially reusable two-stage-to-orbit medium-lift launch vehicle.
• It has been designed and manufactured by SpaceX.
• The launcher uses cryogenic liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene (RP-1) as propellants.
• The name has been derived from the fictional Star Wars spacecraft, the Millennium Falcon.

Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO)

• It is also called as the heliosynchronous orbit.
• This is a polar orbit around a planet. In the orbit, satellite passes over any given point of the planet’s surface at the same local mean solar time.