SpaceX is about to set a brand new rocket-reuse report.
One of many firm’s Falcon 9 rockets is scheduled to raise off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral House Power Station on Wednesday (Dec. 4), throughout a virtually two-hour window that opens at 5:13 a.m. EST (1013 GMT). The mission will ship 24 of SpaceX’s Starlink web satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO).
It will likely be the twenty fourth launch for this Falcon 9’s first stage, in accordance with a SpaceX mission description. That can high the outdated mark of 23 flights, which is held by three totally different boosters.
SpaceX will webcast the launch stay by way of X, starting about 5 minutes earlier than liftoff.
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If all goes in accordance with plan, the Falcon 9’s first stage will come again to Earth for its twenty fourth touchdown about eight minutes after liftoff. It is going to contact down vertically on the drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas,” which will probably be stationed within the Atlantic Ocean.
The rocket’s higher stage, in the meantime, will deploy the 24 Starlink satellites in LEO about 65 minutes after launch.
Wednesday’s mission will notch one more milestone for SpaceX’s Falcon rocket household, which consists of the workhorse Falcon 9 and the extra highly effective Falcon Heavy. SpaceX has launched greater than 400 profitable Falcon 9 missions so far and has landed Falcon first phases 377 instances.
Starlink is the biggest satellite tv for pc constellation ever assembled. It at present consists of more than 6,750 operational satellites, and that quantity is rising on a regular basis.
