American SpaceX in 2020, despite the COVOD-19 pandemic, beat own record in 2018 for the number of rocket launches, according to ArsTechnica.
The publication recalls that the launch of the Falcon 9 heavy carrier with the Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) on December 6 became the 23rd orbital for SpaceX in 2020, while in 2018 the company conducted only 21 rocket launches … ArsTechnica notes that the first stage, which started on December 6, was used for the fourth time. The publication admits that by the end of this year, SpaceX will conduct another three or four launches.
According to Roscosmos data, in 2020 the state corporation carried out a total of 14 rocket launches, 13 of which – with a medium rocket “Soyuz-2” and one – with a heavy “Proton-M”. This means that at the time of this writing, SpaceX has overtaken “Roskosmos” .
In November, SpaceX’s Falcon 9, during the last launch on November 24, installed two records at once. SpaceNews notes that the launch was the hundredth for Falcon 9 carriers, including a failed launch in June 2015, but not a rocket explosion in September 2016. In addition, in its course SpaceX managed to use the same first stage to launch the payload for the seventh time.
In August, Ars Technica reported that, according to the Speedtest test from Ookla, Starlink internet speed when downloading is 11-60 megabits per second, uploading – 5-18 megabits per second. In this case, the signal delay time is 31-94 milliseconds. Some beta users of the system had ping times of 20-21 milliseconds.