SpaceX is about to launch yet one more batch of its Starlink web satellites from Florida within the wee hours of Wednesday morning (July 3).
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 20 Starlink spacecraft, together with 13 with direct-to-cell capabilities, is scheduled to carry off from Cape Canaveral House Power Station on Wednesday throughout a three-hour window that opens at 2:57 a.m. EDT (0601 GMT).
SpaceX will livestream the launch through its X account; protection will start about 5 minutes earlier than liftoff.
If all goes in keeping with plan, the Falcon 9’s first stage will come again to Earth about eight minutes after launch. It would contact down on the droneship referred to as “A Shortfall of Gravitas,” which will probably be stationed within the Atlantic Ocean.
It will likely be the sixteenth launch and touchdown for this specific booster, in keeping with a SpaceX mission description. Ten of its 15 flights so far have been Starlink missions.
The Falcon 9’s higher stage, in the meantime, will proceed hauling the 20 satellites to low Earth orbit, the place they’re going to be deployed about 61 minutes after liftoff.
Wednesday morning’s launch would be the 67th Falcon 9 mission of 2024 already. Greater than 70% of the rocket’s liftoffs this yr have been dedicated to constructing out the ever-growing Starlink megaconstellation, which presently consists of greater than 6,150 operational satellites.
Along with this yr’s Falcon 9 missions, SpaceX has carried out one launch of its highly effective Falcon Heavy rocket and two check flights of Starship, the next-gen car the corporate is creating to assist humanity get a toehold on the moon and Mars.
