They say that sometimes you’re the bug, and sometimes you’re the windshield. An odd aphorism to be sure, but one that perfectly fits Florida: if you don’t like insects being everywhere, then you’re in the wrong place.
Today, we were the figurative bug today: after waiting through weather that seemed more like swimming in a hot, soupy burning sun, at T-Minus 46 seconds, SpaceX scrubbed (canceled) the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from a mere 4.5 miles away.
Long sigh. That’s rocket launches. A hundred thousand things must go right, but if only one of those things go wrong, nobody’s going to space today. Find, fix and try again tomorrow. It is always the right call.
A iPhone photo of Playalinda Beach.The crowd waiting for the launch that was moments away from cancelation.
No doubleheader of launches today, Starlink 10-7 set for Sunday morning.
Cocoa Beach spectators stopping to watch the liftoff of Starlink 8-3 on August 10, 2024 Photo: Charles Boyer / Talk of Titusville
SpaceX sent a batch of Starlink satellites to orbit this morning from Space Launch Complex 40 aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff was at 08:50 AM EDT.
Around 8.25 minutes later, Booster B1067 completed its 21st mission successfully when it landed aboard ASDS ‘Just Read The Instructions’ stationed offshore east of Charleston.
At 09:54 AM EDT, SpaceX announced deployment of the payload of Starlink satellites, successfully concluding its 79th launch this year.
Earlier in the morning, SpaceX announced that it was demurring from launching a second Starlink mission from Florida today as it had previously planned.
The company did not specify any reason for the schedule shift.
Launch Replay
Payload
21 Starlink satellites. Once operational, the members of this Starlink group will join SpaceX’s constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites that provide Internet connectivity to over three million customers in over 100 countries and territories globally.
Next Launch
SpaceX plans to launch the Starlink 10-7 aboard a Falcon 9 from Pad LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center on Sunday morning. The launch window opens at 07:21 AM and extends to a minute before 11 AM.
Being that this is a launch from LC-39A, the best viewing spots will be in the northern Titusville parks, as well as Playalinda Beach.
Date: NET August 11, 2024
Organization: SpaceX
Mission: Starlink 10-7
Rocket: Falcon 9
Launch Site: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center
Launch Window: 07:21 AM – 10:59 AM EDT
Payload: Starlink satellites
Falcon 9’s telltale contrail — it leaves a short contrail shortly before MAX-Q and breaking the sound barrier. Photo: Charles Boyer / Talk of Titusville
Axiom 3 at LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center. The Ax-4 crew will fly aboard a similar spacecraft. Photo: Charles Boyer, Talk of Titusville
Axiom Space announced the crew for its planned Axiom 4 mission today. The company’s release stated that it is partnering with India, through the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Poland, with European Space Agency (ESA) support, and Hungary to send three national astronauts to the space station on Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4), the company’s next commercial human spaceflight mission to the orbiting laboratory.
Ax-4 Commander Peggy Whitson, Mission Pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India, Mission Specialist Sławosz Uznański of ESA/Poland, and Mission Specialist Tibor Kapu of Hungary will make up the crew for the flight, Axiom said.
“Ax-4 represents Axiom Space’s continued efforts to build opportunity for countries to research, innovate, test, and engage with people around the world while in low-Earth orbit,” said Michael Suffredini, CEO of Axiom Space.
Suffredini added that, “This mission broadens horizons for nations with ambitious goals of advancing scientific, technological, and economic pursuits. Our collaboration with ESA for a second time and the inclusion of Hungary and India underscores Axiom Space’s ability to cultivate global partners, expand the scope of exploration, and open up new avenues to grow a global space economy.”
Peggy Whitson
Dr. Peggy Whitson Photo: NASA
Dr. Peggy Whitson (Rice University, 1986) is one of the most experienced astronauts in spaceflight history, having already completed four previous spaceflights. She has spent more than 675 days in space and has flown on the Space Shuttle, Soyuz, and Crew Dragon on previous flights.
Her 289-day flight was the longest single space flight by a woman until Christina Koch’s 328-day flight eclipsed her record. Dr. Whitson is also oldest woman spacewalker ever and holds the record for the most spacewalks by a woman. She has conducted ten EVAs during her career, totalling over sixty hours outside in the darkness of space.
Dr. Whitson is 64 years old, and hails from Beaconsfield, Iowa. Axiom 4 will be her fifth spaceflight.
“I look forward to commanding my second commercial human spaceflight mission with Axiom Space,” said Peggy Whitson, Ax-4 commander. “With a culturally diverse crew, we are not only advancing scientific knowledge but also fostering international collaboration. Our previous missions set the stage. Axiom Mission 1 was the first all-private mission to the space station, Axiom Mission 2 launched the first Saudi female to space, and Axiom Mission 3 included both the first Turkish astronaut and first ESA astronaut to fly on a commercial space mission. Now, with Ax-4, we ascend even higher, bringing even more nations to low-Earth orbit and expanding humanity’s reach among the stars.”
Shubhanshu Shukla
Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla. (Photo: X/@IAF_MCC)
Born in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India, on October 10, 1985, wing commander Shubhanshu Shukla is an alumnus of India’s National Defence Agency, a joint-forces training academy for the Indian military.
Shukla was commissioned on June 17, 2006 in the Indian Air Force. He is a Fighter Combat Leader and a Test Pilot with approximately 2000 hours of flying experience.
Shukla will be India’s second gaganyatri – the Indian term for astronaut – in space. Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma was aboard the Indo-Soviet crewed mission in 1984, making him the first from his country to go space. This will be ISRO’s first crewmember to fly on an American flight destined for the International Space Station.
ISRO is also independently working on advanced development of crewed flight capability. ISRO’s Human Rated Launch Vehicle (or Gaganyaan) is an ongoing program developing the technology needed to launch crewed orbital spacecraft into low Earth orbit. Gaganyaan is ostensibly near its first of two uncrewed test flights, as the first flight’s latest projected launch is sometime this year. ISRO hopes to launch its first crew in 2025.
Gaganyaan capsule. Photo: ISRO
Group Captain Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair, Group Captain Ajit Krishnan, Group Captain Angad Pratap and Wing Commander Shubhanshu Shukla have been named for India’s first crewed flight of Gaganyaan, and undoubtedly, Shubhanshu Shukla’s training, flight experience and lessons learned from flying Crew Dragon on Axiom 4 will be of great aid to ISRO’s efforts to bring the Gaganyaan program to full fruition with a successful first mission.
Sławosz Uznański
Sławosz Uznański Photo: ESA
Born in Łódź, Poland in 1984, Dr. Sławosz Uznański is a Polish engineer working at the European Space Agency (ESA) as a project astronaut since 2023. He was formerly at The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN.)
He will be the second Pole to space, following Mirosław Hermaszewski in 1978. Hermaszewski flew on the Soviet Soyuz 30 spacecraft, and spent nearly eight days in Earth orbit.
He has worked in the pharmaceutical industry on batteries for hybrid cars and radiation protection for astronauts. For the last two years, he has worked on space radiation protection at Remred Space Technologies in the space industry. As a parachutist, he has 38 jumps under his harness.
Kapu will be the second Hungarian astronaut, and like Shubhanshu Shukla, he will be the first from his country to fly on an American spacecraft to ISS. Forty-four years ago, Bertalan Farkas became the first Hungarian astronaut. Farkas flew Soyuz 36 and docked for over 26 days at the Soviet Salyut-6 space station.
Astronauts In Training
The Axiom 4 crew have arrived in Houston, according to Axiom Space, and will now begin training for their flight, slated for NET October 2024. They will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 / Crew Dragon from Florida. Peggy Whitson will lead the training.
Axiom 3 liftoff in January 2024. The Ax-4 crew will fly a similar spacecraft NET October 2024 Photo: Charles Boyer / Talk of Titusville
Despite on a 10% GO forecast and storms closing in from a distance, Falcon 9 flies another perfect mission.
SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying Northrup Grumman’s Cygnus CRS-2 NG-21 (S.S. Francis R. “Dick” Scobee) to orbit this morning from Cape Canaveral. Liftoff was at 11:02 AM EDT under variable skies that showed a strong chance of storms coming in shortly afterwards.
A dawn view of the busiest rocket launch pad in the world, Space Launch Complex 40. A Falcon 9 rocket is 229.6 ft (70 m) tall and 12 ft (3.7 m) in diameter, or 21.2 stories — it would be a tall building in most city skylines. Unfortunately, a line of thunderstorms forced a launch scrub on this day, but still, being at a launch pad is a special thing any time.
The Mid-Course Tracking Station keeping a watching electronic eye on Falcon 9 as it tracks the launch Saturday morning.
SpaceX launched the Starlink 10-9 mission early Saturday morning from Pad LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff was at 01:45 AM EDT, and Booster B1069 completed its 17th flight by successfully landing on the Automated Spaceport Drone Ship ‘Just Read The Instructions’ roughly 8.25 minutes after lifting off and lofting the payload towards orbit. Tonight’s flight was the first after the Starlink 9-3 failure that saw the company pause launching for 15 days.
SpaceX announced a successful payload deployment at 02:49 AM EDT.
The Mid-Course Tracking Station keeping a watching electronic eye on Falcon 9 as it tracks the launch Saturday morning. Photo: Charles Boyer / Talk of Titusville
SpaceX launched the Starlink 10-9 mission early Saturday morning from Pad LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff was at 01:45 AM EDT, and Booster B1069 completed its 17th flight by successfully landing on the Automated Spaceport Drone Ship ‘Just Read The Instructions’ roughly 8.25 minutes after lifting off and lofting the payload towards orbit.
SpaceX announced a successful payload deployment at 02:49 AM EDT.
Falcon 9’s upper stage has completed its second engine burn to place it in the final deploy orbit
This was a Return To Flight mission after the Starlink 9-3 mishap, one that the company stated Friday was the result of “a crack in a sense line for a pressure sensor attached to the vehicle’s oxygen system.”
SpaceX devised and tested a fix quickly after identifying the root cause of the problem, allowing them to fly this morning’s mission a mere 15 days after that issue caused a rare failure in Falcon 9’s second stage. Earlier today, Sarah Walker, the Director of Dragon Mission Management at SpaceX said in a Crew 9 update that the company had removed the faulty sense line and tested the repair at the company’s engine facility in Macgregor, Texas. The fix was also successful in Falcon 9’s Return To Flight mission this morning.
Launch Replay
Payload
Twenty-three Starlink Mini V2 satellites. Once fully operational, the satellites will join the burgeoning Starlink constellation, which serves over three million customers in around one hundred countries worldwide.
A Starlink satellites being deployed in an earlier mission. Photo via SpaceX
Next Launch
SpaceX is scheduled to launch another set of Starlink satellites early on Sunday morning, this time from Space Launch Complex 40.
Date: NET July 28, 2024
Organization: SpaceX
Mission: Starlink Group 10-4
Rocket: Falcon 9
Launch Site: SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
Launch Window: 12:13 – 04:43 AM EDT
Payload: Starlink Mini v2 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.
Keep up with launch news and other space events that affect the local area by subscribing to alerts when we publish a new article by entering your email at the link at the bottom of this page, or by visiting Space Talk here on the website. It’s free, and you can cancel at any time.
SpaceX weathered lightning in the area until skies cleared early this evening, allowing the company to launch the Turksat-6A mission aboard a Falcon 9. Originally scheduled for 5:20 PM EDT, liftoff was delayed several times until 7:30 PM when the afternoon’s storms were far away enough to allow the rocket to safely ascend towards orbit.
Falcon 9 lifting off in January 2024 Photo: Charles Boyer / Talk of Titusville
SpaceX is planning to launch a Falcon 9 carrying a Turkish telecommunications satellite later Monday afternoon from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, weather permitting. The launch window opens at 05:20 PM EDT and extends over four hours to 09:43 PM EDT Monday.
The launch will be SpaceX’s 71st launch of 2024, and its 34th launch from Space Launch Complex 40 this year. Overall, it will 382nd SpaceX launch all time.
At A Glance
Mission: Turksat 6A
Date: NET July 8, 2024
Launch Window: 05:20 PM EDT – 09:43 PM EDT*
Organization: SpaceX
Rocket: Falcon 9
Launch Site: SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
Payload: Communications satellite to geosynchronous orbit. * consult SpaceX for the specific target for T-0.
Payload
Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Abdulkadir Uraloğlu of Türkiye Photo: Türksat
The payload for this mission is a domestically produced telecommunications satellite, Türksat 6A. Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Abdulkadir Uraloğle stated that the Türksat 6A communication satellite was produced with a local production rate of nearly 90 percent. In May, he said, “We produced our Türksat 6A satellite locally and nationally. While producing this, we assigned Türksat’s engineers to the construction of TÜRKSAT 3A, 4A, 4B, 5A, 5B satellites, trained them and included them in the production programs.”
It will be placed in a geosynchronous orbit positioned at 42° East with an expected service lifetime of at least fifteen years once it reaches its operational location and is tested and commissioned.
Türksat 6A will service Türksat’s normal customer base as well as adding four new countries with the new Türksat 6A. “Currently, with our satellites, we cover Europe, the Middle East, the Turkish Republics and a part of the Far East,” Uraloğle said. “We are already selling this service to the geographies I mentioned. There will be additional income by selling this communication service and exporting services to the new 4 countries.” he said.
Weather
According to the 45th Weather Squadron, chances are high for a weather violation on the launch range creating a delay. Their forecast calls for a 70% likelihood of a weather violation, leaving only a 30% chance of acceptable weather. In their July 7th launch discussion, the 45th states, “For both Monday and Tuesday, [a frontal] ridge is expected to shift south of the spaceport, bringing weak southwesterly winds and coastal afternoon thunderstorms to the Cape. Some of these storms may produce 40 mph or greater winds. Convective activity should taper off after sunset, but steering winds are expected to be weak, possibly extending any weather violations that occur.”
Trajectory
Eastward. Falcon 9 will appear to be flying nearly straight out to see for spectators facing the Atlantic Ocean at launch time.
Landing
Landing is expected to be out at sea aboard one of SpaceX’s Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ships.
A live webcast of this mission will begin on SpaceX’s X account feed about five minutes prior to liftoff. Watch live on X.
SpaceX’s official web page has links to their live coverage as well as up-to-date planned launch times.
Spaceflight Now will begin its live launch feed one hour prior to liftoff. SFN on Youtube.
For official updates regarding launch times, SpaceX.com is the best source of information. Starlink launch times change from time to time, and the company generally updates their website within minutes of the decision to change the launch time. This is very handy if none of the streaming options on YouTube have started their broadcasts.
Remember that there is a delay between a launch stream and the actual countdown clock. That is simply because of physics: it takes time for the signal to travel from the launch site, through the Internet, and back down to your phone, resulting in a five to fifteen-second delay.
Next Space Launch an app for iOS and Android phones, has a real-time countdown clock that is accurate to a second, give or take. The app is free. Search the App Store or Google Play.
Launch Viewing: In Person
This morning’s planned launch is from SLC-40, on the south side of the Eastern Range (KSC and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station combined.) The southern parks in Titusville on Washington Avenue and FL-528/A1A in Cape Canaveral are the best spots to watch liftoff directly.
Given the early hours of the launch window (7:30AM – 11:30AM EDT) these restaurants may not be open for launch viewing. Later in the day, all three may well be, so if you are interested, be sure to call ahead to make sure they’ll be ready to serve you.
The Space Bar ($$$) – atop the Courtyard Marriott near Kennedy Parkway
New York New York ($$) – on the Indian River with an outdoor seating area. Is family-friendly.
Shiloh’s ($$$) — located on the Indian River with an outdoor deck overlooking KSC/CCSFS
Indirect Views
There are several excellent viewing spots for SLC-40 launches that offer indirect views — meaning you won’t see the rocket until it clears obstructions such as trees, buildings, even a storm berm in one case.
Parking fees (probably). Pay with your smartphone on the parking app. There are signs everywhere telling you how.
Further away, but still good views.
Northern Titusville Parks
Further away, but really nice views.
Playalinda Beach
Playalinda Beach out on the Cape Canaveral National Seashore will be open to spectators until 8 PM EDT, that is if KSC Security and the National Park Service allow viewers for the launch. It opens to visitors at 6 AM.
Call ahead to be sure.
Cape Canaveral National Seashore • Playalinda Beach
Phone: (386) 428-3384 x0
Current operating hours: 6:00 AM–8:00 PM
If you are going to Playalinda, and if it is open, remember these general tips. Some may not apply to this particular launch.
Get there at least two hours early, or better, earlier than that. Lines are long at the entry gate and they will only allow as many spectator vehicles as there are parking space available.
If the launch L-0 time is moved to after 8PM, you must leave Playalinda, as the National Park Service is very strict about closing hours.
Cape Canaveral National Seashore has a fee to get in and cash is not accepted. Debit and credit cards are okay, or if you have one of the National Park Service’s passes for the Seashore or the National Parks, that will work as well.
Cellphone service is spotty at best and often non-existent at Playalinda. Don’t count on your cellphone to keep up with the launch; you might get a signal, or you might not.
You are not allowed to view from the pullouts on Beach Road. Stanchions will block them. You’ll have to park and go to the beach.
Refreshments are not available. There are no stores at Cape Canaveral National Seashore, so you’ll need to bring drinks and food if you want any while you’re there.
Rangers will keep you back a certain distance from the launch area on the beach. Even if the beach is open, you’ll still be unable to go down to the fence that demarcates the normal security zone. There’s a line that spectators can’t go past somewhat north of the fence. That’s for safety and security.
Be prepared for potential changes or pushbacks in the launch schedule, and keep up by monitoring the live stream links mentioned above.
Keep up with launch news and other space events that affect the local area by subscribing to alerts when we publish a new article by entering your email at the link at the bottom of this page, or by visiting Space Talk here on the website. It’s free, and you can cancel at any time.
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