Close to Main Engine Cutoff, Falcon 9 passed just above the moon from our point of view on the Banana River in Cape Canaveral. Photo: Charles Boyer / ToT
Two launches in two days on two nearly perfect Florida late spring evenings: that’s life on the Space Coast these days, and that’s what’s happened over the last 25 or so hours here at The Cape. Tonight, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 from their launch pad at SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station carrying another 23 Starlink satellites to orbit. Launch was at 6:40 PM EDT, right at the start of the launch window.
This evening’s launch was the 18th launch from SLC-40 this year, the 41st of the year overall from SpaceX (40 Falcon family, 1 Starship test launch), and was the 300th landing of a Falcon family booster. On the average, SpaceX is performing a launch every 2.63 days, which far outperforms any other organization globally, including active nation-states such as China.
Now that Spring Break is over, and many of the winter residents are starting to return home, crowds were not as thick in the usual spots as they have been as little as a few weeks ago. That said, there were still hundreds of people lining the riverbanks in Titusville, in Cape Canaveral and of course on the beaches as well. Those spectators enjoyed a beautiful launch, with Falcon 9 clearly visible until well into the second stage’s flight.
Not long before the launch of Falcon 9, two F-22’s flew near the launch pad over the Banana River.
Booster B0180 Touches Down Safely Near Bahamas
About eight and a half minutes after liftoff, Booster B0180 touched down safely on SpaceX’s ‘A Shortfall Of Gravitas’ automated droneship located offshore in the Atlantic Ocean northeast of the Bahamas, completing its seventh mission safely.
ASOG will return to Port Canaveral in a few days, where the booster will be returned to SpaceX’s Hangar X facility at Kennedy Space Center, and after inspection and reconditioning, it will be prepared for its next flight at some future date to be determined.
Booster B1080
Flight Number
Mission
Date
1
Axiom-2
May 21, 2023
2
Euclid
July 1, 2023
3
Starlink 6-11
August 27 2023
4
Starlink 6-24
October 22, 2023
5
Axiom-3
January 18, 2024
6
CRS-30
March 21, 2024
7
Starlink 6-52
April 18, 2024
Booster B1080 Flight Record as of April 18, 2024
Starlink 6-52 heading to orbit. Photo: Charles Boyer ToT
Next Launch
On Monday, April 22, SpaceX plans to launch another tranche of Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Date: NET April 22, 2024
Organization: SpaceX
Mission: Starlink 6-53
Rocket: Falcon 9
Launch Site: SLC -40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
Launch Time: 06:40 PM EDT (Tentative and subject to change)
Payload: 23 Starink Satellites
Keep in mind that launch dates and times change often. Launch attempts can be scrubbed anytime due to weather, technical reasons, or range conditions.
Falcon 9 pushing through the atmosphere creates a vapor cone on the fairings, April 17, 2024 Photo: Charles Boyer / ToT
SpaceX got Falcon 9 to work right at the beginning of tonight’s launch window when it launched the Starlink 6-51 mission at 5:26 PM EDT into the bluebird skies of the Space Coast. The payload was another 23 Starlink satellites to join the company’s ever-growing constellation of thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit that provide Internet service to underserved areas globally.
Booster Touches Down Safely Near Bahamas
About eight and a half minutes after liftoff, Booster B1077 touched down safely on SpaceX’s ‘Just Read The Instructions’ automated droneship located offshore in the Atlantic Ocean northeast of the Bahamas, completing its 12th mission safely.
Falcon 9 Ascending: as it near the speed of sound, Falcon 9 created a contrail on April 17, 2024 Photo: Charles Boyer / ToT
Booster B1077
Booster B1077 successfully completed its 12th flight. It entered service on October 5, 2022 and was previously used for Crew-5, GPS III Space Vehicle 06, Inmarsat I6-F2, CRS-28, Intelsat G-37, NG-20, and now six Starlink missions, and safely touched down at sea on the Automated Spaceport Drone Ship ‘Just Read The Instructions.’
The drone ship will return to Port Canaveral, where it will be returned to SpaceX’s Hangar X facility at Kennedy Space Center for inspection, refurbishment and preparation for its next mission.
SpaceXBooster B1077
Flight
Mission
Date
1
Crew-5
10/15/2023
2
GPS III SV06
01/18/2023
3
Inmarsat-6 F2
02/18/2023
4
Starlink Group 5-10
03/29/2023
5
Dragon CRS-2 SpX-28
06/05/2023
6
Galaxy 37
08/03/2023
7
Starlink Group 6-13
09/01/2023
8
Starlink Group 6-25
10/30/2023
9
Starlink Group 6-33
12/07/2023
10
Northrup Grumman NG-20
01/30/2024
11
Starlink Group 6-43
03/10/2024
12
Starlink Group 6-51
04/17/2023
Booster 1077 flight record as of April 17, 2024
Next Launch
The wait won’t be long for the next launch from the Space Coast: weather and spacecraft readiness permitting, SpaceX is planning another Starlink launch Thursday, April 18, this time from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Date: NET April 18, 2024
Organization: SpaceX
Mission: Starlink 6-52
Rocket: Falcon 9
Launch Site: SLC -40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
Launch Time: 06:40-11:11 PM EDT (Tentative and subject to change)
Payload: 23 Starink Satellites
Keep in mind that launch dates and times change often. Launch attempts can be scrubbed at any time due to weather, technical reasons or range conditions.
Booster B1062’s 20th Ascent Path Seen from FL 528W in Cape Canaveral. Fishermen were lighting the edges of the river and enjoying the weather as much as the crowd that gathered there to watch the liftoff. Photo: Charles Boyer / ToT
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 tonight from Pad SLC-40 at Cape CAnaveral Space Force Station and sent another twenty-three Starlink satellites to orbit. Liftoff occurred at 09:22 PM EDT on a crisp, clear spring evening on the Space Coast.
Booster B1069 nears Main Engine Cutoff April 12, 2024 Photo: Charles Boyer / ToT
Crowds were heavier than normal along the usual spectator spots, and no one left disappointed — long after staging and for almost seven minutes the second stage could be seen rising and building orbital speed.
As one man said to someone beside me, “Enjoy this, [it] won’t be long until the air is thick and hot as soup.” He’s right. If anything, Friday’s weather was one of the last of Florida spring weather: cool, but not cold with pinpoint stars and crescent moon lighting the sky. It won’t be long until humidity rises and the nightly costal front storms will be a concern for mission managers and launch spectators alike.
Falcon 9 rising: Starlink 6-49 in flight on April 12, 2024 Photo: Ed Cordero, Florida Media Now
Booster Touches Down Safely Near Bahamas
About eight and a half minutes after liftoff, Booster B1062 touched down safely on SpaceX’s A Shortfall of Gravitas automated droneship located offshore in the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas, completing its 20th mission safely.
After returning to Port Canaveral several days from now, B1062 will be returned to SpaceX’s facilities at Hangar X at Kennedy Space Center, where it will be inspected, refurbished, and presumably prepared for its next flight. If it reaches the launch pad, it will be for the 21st time.
Booster B1062 Record
Flight
Mission
Date
1
GPS III SV04 Sacagawea
11/05/2020
2
GPS III SV05 Neil Armstrong
06/17/2021
3
Inspiration 4
09/16/2021
4
Starlink 4-5
01/06/2022
5
Axiom-1
04/08/2022
6
Starlink 4-16
04/29/2022
7
Nilesat-301
06/08/2022
8
Starlink 4-25
07/24/2022
9
Starlink 4-27
08/19/2022
10
Starlink 4-36
10/20/2022
11
Starlink 5-1
12/28/2022
12
Starlink 5-4
02/12/2023
13
OneWeb 17
03/09/2023
14
ArabSat 7B
05/27/2023
15
Starlink 6-7
07/28/2023
16
Starlink 6-23
10/18/2023
17
Starlink 6-30
11/28/2023
18
Starlink 6-38
01/29/2024
19
Starlink 6-44
03/15/2024
20
Starlink 6-49
04/12/2024
Booster 1062 flight record as of April 12, 2024
Payload
Tonight’s mission delivered 23 Starlink satellites to join other Group 6 satellites.
Next Launch
Date: NET April 17, 2024
Organization: SpaceX
Mission: Starlink 6-51
Rocket: Falcon 9
Launch Site: SLC -40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
Launch Time: 05:24 PM – 09:55 PM EDT (Tentative and subject to change)
Payload: 23 Starink Satellites
Keep in mind that launch dates and times change often. Launch attempts can be scrubbed at any time due to weather, technical reasons or range conditions.
Representative Starlink launch on a Falcon 9 Photo: Charles Boyer / ToT
I recently said that covering Starlink launches is almost like covering Southwest Airlines’ daily flights from Orlando International Airport to Austin, Texas. It’s not that watching a rocket launch is boring, it never is, it is simply that SpaceX is flying missions to add to its Starlink constellation so regularly that it has become a reliable and routine service that’s much like, well, airline flights departing from the airport.
A Historic Night For Spaceflight
Tonight is such a launch, but this one comes with a big twist: it is the 20th flight of one of the company’s fleet of Falcon 9 boosters, and that is a first not only for SpaceX but also for spaceflight globally.
That this historic occasion is happening with little fanfare is a testament to the technical comptence of SpaceX generally, and the Falcon 9 teams that refurbish and launch them from the Cape specifically.
And while the booster and fairings are regularly reused, it must also be pointed out that their second stages are not, and that means that SpaceX’s factory in Hawthorne, California is creating not only the second stages at a torrid pace, they are also building Merlin Vacuum engines to power them as well. It is a job extremely well done by everyone, and it should be acknowledged as such by the spaceflight community generally.
Payload
23 Starlink satellites, to be used in SpaceX’s orbital-based Internet service.
Weather
The 45th Weather Squadron is forecasting all but perfect weather for a launch attempt tonight, with even better conditions tomorrow. Liftoff winds have less than a 5% chance of creating a Range Violation Friday, meaning a better than 95% chance of acceptable conditions. On Saturday, even that slight concern has been removed from the 45th’s forecast.
Trajectory
Falcon 9 will take a southeasterly direction tonight, as is customary for Group 6 Starlink missions.
Given that the flight is immediately offshore with no return to launch site, there will be no sonic boom from the launch this evening on the Space Coast.
Booster To Set Record
Tonight is slated to be the 20th flight of Booster B1062, a first for SpaceX — and for spaceflight anywhere. We cover the record of this historic booster here: SpaceX Booster To Launch For 20th Time Friday Night.
Will B1062 Fly A 21st Time?
That next flight is of interest because last May, “Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of build and flight reliability, said in May [2023] that engineers were in the process of certifying Falcon 9 boosters for up to 20 flights for Starlink missions,” according to a report by Stephen Clark at Ars Technica.
Later in 2023, Nate Janzen, manager of launch pad systems and operations for SpaceX at Vandenberg told Santa Barbara, California’s Noozhaek that “Next year, SpaceX will re-evaluate and conduct analysis with an eye toward certifying the first-stage boosters for 25 to 30 flights.” Whether or not that certification has been achieved as of yet will be an interesting bit of news to follow.
Landing
Per SpaceX, “Following stage separation, the first stage will land on the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.”
After touching down on A Shortfall of Gravitas, the booster will be returned to Port Canveral after a few days, where it will be offloaded and transported to SpaceX’s Hangar X facility at Kennedy Space Center, where it will be inspected, refurbished and possibly prepared for another next flight.
Interesting Stats
This will be the 39th SpaceX launch this year1
351st SpaceX launch all time1
17th launch from SLC-40 this year
2 days, 19:42:00 turnaround for this pad if it launches at 9:22 PM EDT
298th Falcon family Booster landing
65th landing on A Shortfall Of Gravitas
If successful, it will be the 252nd consecutive successful Falcon 9 launch (excluding Amos-6)2
1: this includes Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Starship Heavy Launches 2: Amos-6 is discounted due to a pad failure, not an in-flight anomoly
SpaceX will have a livestream of the launch on their website: Starlink 6-49. This will also be available on the X platform.
Spaceflight Now will have coverage of the launch starting about one hour before liftoff on Youtube: link
Watching In Person
This evening’s planned launch is from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral, which means that the best direct views of liftoff are: Banana River Bridge on FL-528 W near Port Canaveral, or the southern parks on US-1 / S. Washington Avenue in Titusville. Kennedy Point Park and,Rotary Riverview Park (among others) are your best bets.
Cocoa Beach, Cocoa Beach Pier, Jetty Park Pier will have indirect views, meaning that liftoff will not be visible, but after the rocket clears the pad and any ground obstructions, you will be able to see Falcon 9 ascending clearly assuming there are no clouds between you and the rocket.
Being that the launch is in the evening, if you plan to attend in person, don’t forget mosquito spray. Be prepared for potential pushes in the launch schedule, and keep up by monitoring the live stream links mentioned above.
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