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SpaceX is continuing its aggressive launch cadence as it launched yet another Falcon 9 mission from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida earlier today. The mission saw SpaceX reuse a Falcon 9 rocket for the thirteenth time, and the rocket made a land landing that was captured by a drone as it approached the ground. The mission was for SpaceX's Starlink rival OneWeb, with the firm launching 40 satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO) as part of its third mission with SpaceX.

SpaceX's OneWeb Launch To Continue Deploying Satellites For More Than An Hour

The mission took off at 2:13 pm eastern time to mark OneWeb's 17th overall launch as part of its LEO constellation of 648 satellites. With today's mission, OneWeb has launched 614 satellites into orbit. Most of these launches have occurred on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft, but OneWeb was forced to switch gears early last year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Since then, the firm has launched two missions on India's LVM-3 rocket and three on the Falcon 9. Its first Falcon 9 launch was in December 2022, and the second occurred at the start of this year.

Today's launch saw SpaceX maintain not only a strong launch cadence for 2023, but it also marked another time that the firm had used a Falcon 9 rocket for the thirteenth time. The launch was a typical Falcon 9 affair, with the rocket successfully lifting off, crossing the speed of sound, and separating from its second stage.

This mission was also the fourth one of this year when SpaceX landed its Falcon 9 boosters on land. Most of the land landings have taken place from the Cape, except SpaceX's Falcon Heavy launch, which took place from the Kennedy Space Center, also in Florida, and saw both the boosters land on land at different sites.

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The rocket's landing was a special affair, as it was a rare occasion when SpaceX used a drone to share live views of the Falcon 9 first stage's center E9 Merlin 1D rocket engine igniting to reduce its speed for a landing. When the engine fired up, the Falcon 9 booster was approaching the landing site a little under the speed of sound and close at 1,100 kilometers per hour. SpaceX's drone showed the green flash from the TEA-TEB ignition fluid on the Merlin engine and covered the rocket's descent until its landing legs deployed to slow it down to roughly 160 kilometers per hour when the landing legs deployed. At this point, the camera shifted to a view of the pad.

Interestingly though, today's drone footage comes after SpaceX's previous booster, which had completed 12 missions, saw combustion problems during its landing burn which caused the firm to test its brand new rocket booster for NASA's Crew-6 launch to the space station earlier this month. SpaceX's investigation cleared the NASA booster for launch, and the firm speculated that an engine boot for the rocket might be repsonbile for the fire.

The OneWeb launch was a long one for SpaceX, as the firm continued to launch the satellites into orbit more than 90 minutes after liftoff. The satellites were deployed in pairs of two at various time intervals, with the final deployment taking place at 597 kilometers - just above SpaceX's orbital altitude for the Starlink internet constellation.

You can watch the full coverage of today's mission down below: