SpaceX launches 21 Starlink satellites on Falcon 9 return to flight mission – Spaceflight Now

Replace 4:04 a.m. EDT: SpaceX launched the mission and landed its first stage booster on its droneship, ‘Simply Learn the Directions.’

After shuffling the launch schedule a bit, SpaceX  kicked off back-to-back launches from each coasts within the span of a bit of greater than an hour. The corporate first launched the Starlink 8-10 mission from Cape Canaveral Area Drive Station, earlier than it launched one other flight of Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Area Drive Base.

The launch will add one other 21 Starlink satellites to SpaceX’s rising megaconstellation in low Earth orbit. Liftoff from Area Launch Advanced 40 (SLC-40) occurred at 3:43 a.m. EDT (0743 UTC), the tip of the Saturday launch window.

The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, tail quantity B1069 within the SpaceX fleet, launched for an 18th time. It beforehand launched SpaceX’s twenty fourth Cargo Resupply Providers (CRS-24) mission to the Worldwide Area Station, Eutelsat’s HOTBIRD-F1 satellite tv for pc and 13 earlier Starlink missions.

About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1069 landed on the SpaceX droneship, ‘Simply Learn the Directions.’ This was the ninetieth touchdown for JRTI and SpaceX’s 342nd droneship touchdown thus far.

Shifting round in launch occasions early Saturday morning moved this launch into the place of being SpaceX’s return to flight mission. This follows a brief interval throughout when the Falcon fleet was grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) attributable to a failed booster touchdown try on Wednesday morning.

Again to flight (once more)

Whereas SpaceX was briefly grounded from launching its Falcon 9 rockets, this go round was dramatically shorter than the paused attributable to an higher stage anomaly in July, which lasted about two weeks. SpaceX was grounded for simply a few days after one in every of its boosters, B1062, did not land safely amid the Starlink 8-6 flight on Wednesday.

The touchdown failure was the primary misfire on this method for the reason that Starlink L19 mission in February 2021.

“The SpaceX Falcon 9 automobile could return to flight operations whereas the general investigation of the anomaly in the course of the Starlink Group 8-6 mission stays open, supplied all different license necessities are met,” the FAA mentioned in a press release on Friday. “SpaceX made the return to flight request on Aug. 29 and the FAA gave approval on Aug. 30.”

SpaceX wasted no time in getting again to the launchpad. Within the hours following the FAA’s assertion, the corporate introduced plans to launch the Starlink 9-5 and 8-10 missions from VSFB and Cape Canaveral Area Drive Stanton respectfully.

The previous of these two was initially billed because the second act of back-to-back scheduled launches on Wednesday. Nevertheless, after the booster touchdown anomaly, SpaceX determined to carry off on launching the Starlink 9-5 flight.

SpaceX can also be making an attempt to find out when subsequent it could try the launch of its subsequent Crew Dragon mission: Polaris Daybreak. On Thursday, SpaceX mentioned it was nonetheless working to establish a launch date that may have a good climate setup for a splashdown off the coast of Florida about 5 days after launch.