SpaceX on Wednesday sent up the first of two Space Coast rockets scheduled for a two-day launch, both carrying batches of the company's Starlink satellites. The second flight is scheduled to depart on Thursday evening.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 on the Starlink 6-52 mission carrying 23 satellites is scheduled to lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at the opening of a four-hour window from 6:40 to 10:40 p.m., with a backup window on April 19 from 6:14 to 10:14 p.m
The Delta 45 Space Launch Vehicle Weather Squadron predicts a 90% chance of good conditions for this launch.
This is a southern release path, so it should be most visible along the east coast of Florida.
The first stage booster is flying for the seventh time and will attempt to land on the A Shortfall of Gravitas drone.
This will be the 29th launch of the year, with all but two coming from SpaceX, which launched its 28th launch a day earlier with a Falcon 9 rocket that also carries 23 internet satellites for the growing SpaceX constellation that lifted off at 5:26 p.m. from the Kennedy Space Center. . Launch pad 39-A amid a clear blue sky.
Ignite Merlin's engine and Falcon 9 takes off! pic.twitter.com/GVID9qsdUk
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 17, 2024
This was the 12th flight of the first-stage rocket that SpaceX said achieved a successful landing in the Atlantic Ocean on the Just Read the Instructions drone.
These will be Starlink's 157th and 158th overall launches since the first operational deployment of Internet satellites in 2019. The original launches sent up smaller versions with many flying 60 at a time.
While SpaceX waits for a functional version of its Starship and Super Heavy rockets that will be able to fly larger and much larger versions, a mid-range solution called the V2 Mini has been flying, but only 23 at a time typically.
With these batches, SpaceX will have sent more than 6,250 satellites, according to the American “space” website. Statistics tracked by astronomer Jonathan McDowell.
Of these, McDowell states that as of March 13, 5,809 are still in orbit, and 5,744 have been evaluated as operational. The FCC in 2022 increased SpaceX's license to allow 7,500 satellites in its constellation.
United Launch Alliance has only flown two other non-SpaceX launches this year — the first a Vulcan Centaur launch in January, and the last a Delta IV Heavy launch earlier this month. It is preparing for its third launch, Atlas V, with the first crewed flight of a Boeing CST-100 Starliner carrying a pair of NASA astronauts to the International Space Station. It aims to lift off on May 6 at 10:34 p.m
SpaceX has several other launches in the pipeline before then, most of them dedicated to Starlink.
Including Thursday's planned Starlink launch, 16 of SpaceX's 27 launches from the Space Coast will be for Starlink.
Including launches in California from Vandenberg Space Force Base, they will have made 27 of this year's 40 launches if Thursday's launch is also successful. The company said it could fly up to 148 orbital missions, which would break the record of 96 flights in 2023.
The majority of these will be from KSC and Canaveral, which could exceed 100 launches for the year.
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