CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX launched its fifth Starlink satellite mission in the span of a month, with a Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Wednesday.

What You Need To Know

  • SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station

  • Company is building network of tens of thousands of broadband satellites

  • It's the fifth Starlink mission in the span of a month

The rocket lifted off another batch of mini-satellites for the private company Wednesday afternoon in a perfect daytime launch.

The company typically sends about 60 of the small satellites into orbit at a time. It's building a constellation, currently comprised of 1,400 satellites, that will eventually number in the tens of thousands that will help deliver broadband access around the world.

About 10 minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9 first stage booster made a soft landing on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship positioned out in the Atlantic Ocean. This marked the booster's seventh launch and landing and SpaceX's 10th launch of 2021.

The launch comes just days after an experimental SpaceX rocket exploded at the end of a test flight — one of several losses of a Starship prototype at the company's facility in south Texas in the past few months. The rocket, called SN11, followed the explosion of SN9 during landing in January and the March loss of another prototype Starship minutes after it had landed.