SpaceX is about to interrupt its rocket-reuse report but once more.
A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch 23 of SpaceX’s Starlink web satellites to orbit from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station on Friday (April 12) throughout a three-hour window that opens at 9:22 p.m. EDT (0122 GMT on April 13).
It is going to be the twentieth liftoff for this specific Falcon 9 first stage, in accordance with a SpaceX mission description, setting a brand new reusability mark for the corporate. The mission can be lifting off on the forty third anniversary of NASA’s first launch of its reusable spacecraft, the area shuttle, which first flew today in 1981.
You may watch the launch stay on SpaceX’s web site or here on X (previously Twitter). The stay webcast will start about 5 minutes earlier than launch, SpaceX has stated..
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If all goes to plan, the Falcon 9’s first stage will come again to Earth for the twentieth time, touchdown about 8.5 minutes after it launched on the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas, which shall be stationed within the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast.
The Falcon 9’s higher stage, in the meantime, will proceed hauling the 23 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO). The spacecraft are set to be deployed there about 65.5 minutes after liftoff.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk needs to assist humanity colonize Mars and obtain a wide range of different bold exploration feats. Rocket reusability is a key a part of this imaginative and prescient, serving to to chop the price of spaceflight and improve its cadence.
So SpaceX’s reuse information do not are inclined to final lengthy. The earlier mark — 19 flights for a Falcon 9 booster — was first set in December 2023 after which repeated in February and March 2024.
SpaceX has launched 37 orbital missions to this point in 2024. Most of them have been devoted to constructing out its Starlink broadband megaconstellation, which at the moment consists of almost 5,650 operational satellites.
