SpaceX sent another batch of 23 Starlink satellites for their orbital-based Internet service tonight from Cape Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 booster. The mission was designated Starlink 6-37, part of Group 6 of Starlink satellites providing global Internet connectivity to the company’s customers.
SpaceX sent another batch of 23 Starlink satellites for their orbital-based Internet service tonight from Cape Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 booster. The mission was designated Starlink 6-37, part of Group 6 of Starlink satellites providing global Internet connectivity to the company’s customers.
Liftoff was shortly after 8:52 pm EST from Pad SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Tonight’s re-useable booster was B1071 making its 12th flight. Roughly eight and a half minutes after liftoff, B1071 touched down safely near the Bahamas on a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean.
The second stage continued to carry the company’s payload to orbit, which it achieved successfully at about the same time the first stage booster was touching down. Shortly afterward, the Starlink satellites were deployed and the launch was deemed a success by mission managers.
Tonight’s launch was to the southeast, as has been customary with other launches of the Group 6 batch of Starlink satellites.
This was the 12th flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission is B1071. The booster previously launched SES-22, ispace’s HAKUTO-R Mission 1, Hispasat Amazonas Nexus mission, CRS-27, and seven Starlink missions.
Following stage separation, the first stage landed on the autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship, stationed in the Atlantic Ocean northeast of the Bahamas.
The booster will be returned to Port Canaveral and then transferred to SpaceX’s Hangar X facility at Kennedy Space Center for inspection and ostensibly refurbishment for another flight on a future mission.
Axiom-3, a crewed launch planned to ferry four astronauts to the International Space Station aboard a Falcon 9.
The mission will be the first to carry and all-European crew to the International Space Station. It will be the third crewed mission to the International Space Station coordinated by Axiom Space.
Ax-3 will be the first all-European commercial astronaut mission to the ISS. It will also be the first commercial spaceflight mission made up of government and European Space Agency-sponsored astronauts flying on behalf of their nation.
The launch date is NET Wednesday January 17, 2024 at 5:11 PM EST from Pad LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center.
SpaceX called off its launch attempt of Falcon 9 from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station early this evening, around 7:18pm. The company did not share a reason for their decision, but it made the call early, with about ninety minutes left on the countdown clock.
Later on, SpaceX announced that announced on their website that they are now
“SpaceX is targeting Sunday, January 14 for a Falcon 9 launch of 23 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Liftoff is targeted for 7:27 p.m. ET with backup opportunities available until 11:25 p.m. ET.”
SpaceX Starlink 6-37 information page. Note: dates and times may be changed on the SpaceX website without notice. Click the link for currently up-to-date information.
The 45th Weather Squadron’s forecast looks good tomorrow, with conditions deteriorating if there is another 24 hour delay.
As always, launch times are fluid and can change quickly.
SpaceX plans to launch another batch of Starlink satellites aboard a Falcon 9 to its LEO Internet service constellation on Saturday, January 13, 2024. The launch window opens at 7:52 PM EST and closes early Sunday at 12:23 AM. The launch will be from Pad SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Weather is a slight concern for the launch as a warm front pushes storms through the area today.
Southeast, as has been customary for Starlink’s Group 6 launches.
One day before launch, the 45th Space Wing forecasts a 70% chance of acceptable weather, with a 30% Probability of Violation that would force a scrub.
As always, it bears keeping in mind that a rocket launch can be scrubbed (canceled) up to and including the final minute of the countdown. Those scrubs may result from weather violations, intrusion into the excluded areas beneath the planned flight path or technical issues that arise during the countdown. Stay tuned to launch coverage for up-to-date information.
SpaceX will begin live-streaming the launch on their X account about five minutes before liftoff.
Spaceflight Now usually begins their live coverage about one hour prior to liftoff on their YouTube channel.
NASA announced today that the Artemis program has encountered new delays, causing a shift in the timeline of planned launches.
Artemis II is now slated for September 2025, with Artemis III now slated for September 2026 according to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a news conference held this afternoon. Artemis IV, the first mission to the Gateway lunar space station, remains on track for 2028. “As I continue to say, we will launch when are ready,” said NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free. Free is the third highest-ranking executive and highest-ranking civil servant. He is the senior advisor to NASA.
Originally slated for late 2024, Artemis II has been delayed due to technical issues that have cropped up in the program since the Artemis I launch in 2022. Those issues range from problems encountered with batteries for the Orion capsule during testing. Artemis III, the planned landing on the moon has also encountered delays as SpaceX works on its Starship Heavy launcher and with it the human lander needed to touch down on the lunar surface.
Rumors had been floating around in the space industry that NASA might choose to repeat the Artemis I mission with Artemis II, but the agency made it clear today that Artemis II will remain “the first crewed Artemis mission around the Moon.”
“[Artemis I] was so successful that additional tests were added in the course [of the mission],” remarked NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. Prior to launching, it must first solve some technical issues that have arisen since Artemis I splashed down in the Pacific Ocean near California on December 11, 2022.
The Orion capsule experienced unexpected loss of char layer pieces during the re-entry phase of the Artemis I mission, prompting NASA and prime Orion contractor Lockheed Martin to open an investigation into the issue to find the root cause of the unexpected material loss, as well as develop plans to fix it.
“From the test flight, we found one item that we need a little more time to work, and that is the thermal protection system on the […] heat shield,” said Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator, Moon to Mars Program, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate in today’s media conference.
Kshatriya continued that the review is going “quite well” but NASA wants to assemble the data and understand it quite well before the Artemis II flight. “Before we attempty re-entry from a circumlunar mission like we’ll have from Artemis II that we’re 100% confident that we understand under those conditions.”
“During the acceptance of some components for Artemis III we noticed a failure in some motor valve circuitry that was driving valves on the spacecraft itself,” said Kshatriya. “These components passed testing for Artemis II but did not for Artemis III. That gave us pause and caused us to examine that circuit in a more detailed way. When we examined it, we learned that there was a design flaw in that circuit. Those valve electronics affect many parts of the life support system in the spacecraft, in particular the CO2 scrubbing system. Once we recognized the design flaw […] it became very clear to us that it was unacceptable to accept that hardware and we have to replace it in order to guarantee the safety of the crew.”
“The way to replace that given the current configuration of the spacecraft, the access to those components, the access to those bays is going to take us quite a bit of time to get to,” Kshatriya continued. “Every connector that we touch as part of that replacement operation will have to be tested after we’re done and we’ll have to put the vehicle through functional testing afterwards. We know how to fix it,” Kshatriya said. “We just need to make sure that we take the time to do it according to the workmanship standards that we expect for a human-rated vehicle.”
Launch Tower
NASA has a new launch tower that they plan to use for the next Artemis mission. The 380-foot tall (115 meters) tower connects to NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), which is set to launch the Artemis II crew of four astronauts around the moon.
NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems team has been performing tests and applying upgrades for the new tower. They recently conducted a launch day demonstration for the Artemis II crew of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
“There are new capabilities being on-ramped for the mission,” said Kshatriya. “We have new facilities at KSC to enable rapid turnaround for propellant loading, as well as [new capabilities] for the loading of the crew and the egress of the crew.”
“For the launch vehicle, we have a new abort system that will be activated in an integrated way across the stack and of course with the spacecraft, we have a new life-support system and its ability to respond to those aborts. Those are all added, and of course those will support the crew and to support crew safety,” Kshatriya said.
“We’ve qualified Orion to survive [the abort environment.] We have, however, as part of that qualification campaign found a few cases where we believe there could be some deficiencies in the performance of the electrical system in particular some of the batteries that we need to make sure we understand how they are enduring those environments.”
“We’re still very early in that investigation. We’ve not yet developed a forward path. Multiple parallel options [exist] to fix this issue,” said Kshatriya. He added that “We also have a lot of options to determine whether or not we believe those environments are accurate and we have a lot of testing to do, and we wanted to make sure we gave ourselves the time to do that. Crew safety is going to drive our decision making there.”
NASA did not comment about any new in-flight abort systems test in today’s teleconference.
While these delays may be frustrating to the public, perhaps NASA Administrator Bill Nelson put it best today when he echoed Jim Free by saying that “we’ll fly when we are ready to fly.”
For the space agency crew safety is the first priority followed by mission assurance. The simple truth is that not many people will remember the delays five years in the future, but no one would ever forget a disaster. NASA has made mistakes rushing launches in the past and it is showing a dogged determination to not the repeat those mistakes again. That’s as it should be, not only for NASA, for America and for space exploration, but also to the crew of the Artemis missions and their families.
United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket lifted off of Pad SLC-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force station at 2:18:38 EST this morning, with the rocket working in near-perfect fashion as it sent the Astrobiotics Peregrine lunar lander towards the moon and a Celestis memorial payload on its way to permanent solar orbit.
United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket lifted off of Pad SLC-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force station at 2:18:38 EST this morning, with the rocket working in near-perfect fashion as it sent the Astrobiotics Peregrine lunar lander towards the moon, and a Celestis memorial payload on its way to permanent solar orbit.
After a countdown with no apparent problems or issues, Vulcan lifted off right on time and flew off the launch pad. Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines worked as advertised, and coupled with GEM solid rocket boosters, the first stage hoisted the payload towards space flawlessly. The second stage was also up to its task, and performed two major burns on time and for their full duration.
At 3:17 am EST, Astrobiotics established communications with the Peregrine spacecraft, and now in space, Peregrine will continue on its journey to the moon and the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission can begin in earnest. While Astrobiotics work is just beginning, ULA and Blue Origin can take deep satisfaction in the first mission of Vulcan being an unqualified success.
Today’s launch marks the first successful orbital launch of the methalox-powered American rocket. Chinese company LandSpace successfully orbited the payload with its Zuque-2 rocket in July of 2023. The Relativity and SpaceX attempts were test flights, with no customer payloads aboard, while Vulcan will have at least two customers with assets on the first flight of Vulcan.
Vulcan is the first rocket designed wholly by United Launch Alliance. The Delta and Atlas family of rockets were legacy designs created by Boeing and Lockheed Martin respectively prior to the founding of the company in 2006. ULA is a joint venture between the two aerospace giants, and has successfully launched more than 155 missions since its inception.
SpaceX sent the next batch of 23 Starlink satellites for their orbital-based Internet service tonight from Cape Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 booster. Liftoff was shortly after 5:35 pm EST from Pad SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Roughly eight and a half minutes after liftoff, the booster used for the flight touched down safely near the Bahamas. The second stage continued to carry the company’s payload to orbit, which it achieved successfully at about the same time the first stage booster was touching down.
When Space Force and NASA officials said that 2024 was likely to be the busiest year in the history of the Eastern Range, they weren’t kidding. SpaceX announced today that they are planning to launch Falcon 9 tomorrow afternoon on the Starlink 6-35 mission from Pad SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station — the pad immediately adjacent to Pad SLC-41, where United Launch Alliance plans to launch the maiden voyage of Vulcan. SpaceX’s window opens at 4pm EST, while Vulcan is slated for 2:18am — ten hours and eighteen minutes later.
United Launch Alliance (ULA) announced today that they have concluded their Launch Readiness Review for the maiden launch of their Vulcan rocket. The mission has been cleared to proceed to its planned liftoff at 2:18 am EST on Monday, January 8th.
ULA also added that the weather at liftoff time currently has only a 15% Probability of Violation at launch time, meaning that forecasters are calling for an 85% chance of acceptable launch conditions. The new rocket will carry the Astrobiotics Peregrine lunar lander built under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program and a secondary payload of memorials for Celestis.
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