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Replace: Liftoff occurred at 11:50 p.m. EDT. Comply with deployment of the satellites in our Launch Pad Dwell stream.
For the second time this week, SpaceX is pushing the envelope by flying a Falcon 9 rocket for a sixteenth time. Booster 1060 is now scheduled to liftoff from Cape Canaveral’s pad 40 at 11:50 p.m. EDT (0350 UTC) Saturday carrying 54 Starlink satellites into orbit. Simply final Sunday, Booster 1058 launched 22 second-generation Starlink satellites, turning into the primary Falcon 9 rocket to make a sixteenth flight. Beforehand, the reusable Falcon 9 first stage booster had solely been licensed for 15 missions.
Will probably be the second launch try for this mission after an unspecified drawback triggered a launch scrub through the last minute of the countdown early Friday morning. SpaceX pushed again the following launch try by a day and performed a static take a look at hearth early Saturday morning to clear the rocket for flight tonight.
Throughout the take a look at the Falcon 9’s 9 Merlin engines ignited at 12:50 a.m. EDT (0450 UTC) and fired for about ten seconds whereas the rocket was held down on the launch pad. SpaceX didn’t present an replace on the end result of the take a look at however presumably all went effectively as the corporate proceeded in the direction of one other launch try.
The Falcon 9 first stage booster, tail quantity 1060, beforehand launched GPS III-3, Turksat 5A, Transporter-2, Intelsat G-33/G-34, Transporter-6, and 10 Starlink missions. Will probably be solely the second booster to have flown 16 occasions, following shut of the heels of Booster 1058’s launch of twenty-two second-generation Starlink satellites. Will probably be solely the second booster to have flown 16 occasions, following shut of the heels of Booster 1058’s July 9 launch of twenty-two second-generation Starlink satellites.
This mission, designated Starlink 5-15 will loft the final 54 older-generation Starlink V1.5 satellites. Earlier this yr SpaceX began inserting a brand new era of Starlink satellites in orbit, often known as Starlink V2 Minis, that are bigger and provide 4 occasions the broadband capability of the older-design satellites.
The Starlink community offers high-speed, low-latency connectivity to clients all over the world. SpaceX says every Starlink launch provides greater than a terabit per second of capability to the constellation.
SpaceX presently has 4397 functioning Starlink satellites in house, in line with a tabulation by Jonathan McDowell, an skilled tracker of spaceflight exercise and an astronomer on the Harvard-Smithsonian Middle for Astrophysics.
If all goes in line with plan, the first-stage booster will land on the drone ship ‘A Quick Fall of Gravitas’ within the Atlantic Ocean about eight and a half minutes after launch. The 54 Starlink satellites will probably be deployed simply over an hour after launch.
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