SpaceX is making ready for its newest Falcon 9 launch from pad 39A NASA’s Kennedy House Middle. The Starlink 6-51 mission comes a couple of week-and-a-half after the launch of its first Bandwagon-1 rideshare mission from that pad.
Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket is ready for five:26 p.m. EDT (2126 UTC) throughout an roughly 4 hour launch window. The climate outlook is pretty excellent for the mission. The forty fifth Climate Squadron forecast a 90 % probability of favorable circumstances at liftoff, with thick clouds close to the launch pad being the one concern.
Spaceflight Now can have stay protection of the mission starting about one hour previous to liftoff.
As soon as this rocket launches, SpaceX will likely be one flight shy of tying the overall variety of House Shuttle missions from this historic launch pad. This would be the 81st flight of a Falcon rocket in comparison with the 82 whole shuttle flights.
After liftoff, there will likely be a complete of 174 orbital flights from LC-39A. 9 of these have been Falcon Heavy rockets with the remaining 72 being Falcon 9 rockets. There have been additionally 11 Saturn 5 launches from this pad.
The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, tail quantity B1077 within the SpaceX fleet, will likely be launching for a twelfth time. It beforehand supported missions just like the Crew-5 flight for NASA’s Business Crew Program, the GPS 3 House Car 06 geostationary satellite tv for pc and a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft on the NG-20 mission to the Worldwide House Station.
About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1077 will landing on the SpaceX droneship, ‘Simply Learn the Directions.’ This would be the 78th booster touchdown for JRTI and the 298th touchdown for SpaceX thus far. It comes simply days after B1062 achieved flight chief standing with 20 whole launches.
The 23 Starlink satellites on board will add to the 5,809 presently on orbit, in accordance with astronomer and skilled orbital tracker, Jonathan McDowell. SpaceX launched 564 Starlink satellites to this point in 2024 and this will likely be its twenty sixth flight this yr so as to add extra.
Over 20 Tbps of Starlink fronthaul capability delivered to orbit by way of this primary stage!
— Michael Nicolls (@michaelnicollsx) April 13, 2024
