SpaceX reached a brand new reusability milestone with its Falcon 9 rocket with a Starlink launch from Florida on Friday night time. The primary stage booster, tail quantity B1062, launched for a file twenty first time, the primary in SpaceX’s rocket fleet to take action.
The launch of Starlink 6-59 mission added 23 extra satellites to the rising low Earth orbit web constellation and was the corporate’s thirty sixth devoted Starlink launch of the yr.
Since making its debut in November 2020, B1062 launched two GPS satellites, eight astronauts over two missions (Inspiration4 and Ax-1) together with 13 Starlink flights. So far, it despatched 553 payloads to orbit, together with the 2 Crew Dragon spacecraft.
Previous to its Might 17 flight, it most just lately launched a few month in the past on the Starlink 6-49 mission. Like final time, about 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1062 landed on the SpaceX droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’ This was the seventieth booster touchdown utilizing ASOG and the 309th Falcon 9 booster touchdown thus far.
In response to the latest statistics revealed by skilled orbital tracker and astronomer Jonathan McDowell, as of the morning of Might 17, there have been 6,017 whole Starlink satellites on orbit and 5,941 in operation.
Previous to the launch of the Starlink 6-59 mission, a complete of 6,436 satellites launched to LEO with 788 going up in 2024.
Starship Flight 4 improvement
Whereas SpaceX was getting ready for its Friday night time Falcon 9 launch, it has additionally been busy down in southern Texas working in direction of the fourth built-in flight check of its Starship rocket.
The practically 400-foot-tall rocket was stacked on the launch pad at SpaceX’s Starbase facility on Wednesday, Might 15. The next day, it carried out a partial moist costume rehearsal the place it practiced loading liquid methane and liquid oxygen onboard the car.
A launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) permitting for the subsequent flight check of the car continues to be pending, however in a Might 11 reply on X (previously Twitter), SpaceX founder Elon Musk instructed {that a} launch was “in all probability three to 5 weeks” away.
In an event hosted by the Harlingen Financial Improvement Company on Might 14, Kathy Leuders, SpaceX’s Starbase basic supervisor, mentioned they’re working in direction of having a license by the top of Might or starting of June.
“We’re going be prepared as at all times. We’re going to have the car stacked and the primary day we get that license, we’re going to fly,” Leuders mentioned.
She additionally famous in her discuss which have additionally begun testing Starship rockets past the fourth flight. In response to an viewers query, she addressed a difficulty on Ship 31 captured by LabPadre’s cameras, which reveals a pulsating flashing coming from the rocket.
“We have been testing our subsequent spherical of automobiles, subsequent spherical of Starships and we had a check anomaly that we’re assessing proper now and understanding what does that imply,” Leaders mentioned. “We’re at all times engaged on automobiles, however when there’s an issue on a car that’s within the stream, you wish to just remember to can separate the reason for that downside out of your flight car. And so what the groups are doing proper now could be actually stepping into and saying is it the identical design precisely? Is there another motive for us to have separation to ensure we’re not going right into a flight check with there being a difficulty.”
Whereas SpaceX hasn’t commented additional on the anomaly, by transferring ahead with the moist costume rehearsal on Might 16, they probably both mounted the difficulty or really feel snug that it might not impression Ship 29, which is getting used on IFT-4.
