Starlink v0.9 launch

Sixty flat-panel satellites departed the Falcon 9 as a single stack on 24 May 2019, spreading apart in low Earth orbit from a shared deployment altitude of 440 km. Each weighed 227 kg; together they totaled 13,620 kg — the heaviest payload SpaceX had flown to that date. Two prototype Tintin satellites had preceded them in 2018, but nothing at this scale had been attempted.

The v0.9 satellites carried Hall-effect ion thrusters fueled by krypton rather than the xenon used by most other satellite operators. Krypton was cheaper and more abundant, though slightly less efficient — a trade SpaceX judged acceptable at constellation scale. These were the first commercial satellites to use krypton ion propulsion. Each spacecraft was designed to raise itself from the 440 km deployment altitude to its 550 km operational orbit under its own thrust, and to deorbit autonomously at end of life.