SpaceX will launch 20 Starlink web satellites from California early Thursday morning (Nov. 7), simply hours after lofting one other batch from the East Coast.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Starlink spacecraft — 13 of which have direct-to-cell functionality — is scheduled to elevate off from Vandenberg Area Power Base on Thursday, throughout a three-hour window that opens at 2:02 a.m. EST (0602 GMT; 11:02 p.m. Nov. 6 native time). The corporate additionally plans to launch 23 Starlink craft from Florida on Wednesday night, at 7:39 p.m. EST (2339 GMT).
SpaceX will webcast each launches dwell by way of X, starting about 5 minutes earlier than liftoff.
If all goes in accordance with plan on Thursday morning, the Falcon 9’s first stage will come again to Earth for a vertical landing about eight minutes after liftoff on the droneship “Of Course I Nonetheless Love You,” which can be stationed within the Pacific Ocean.
Will probably be the eleventh launch and touchdown for this explicit booster, in accordance with a SpaceX mission description.
The Falcon 9’s higher stage, in the meantime, will proceed its trek to low Earth orbit (LEO), in the end deploying the 20 Starlink satellites there about 60 minutes after liftoff.
SpaceX has already launched greater than 100 Falcon 9 missions in 2024, about two-thirds of which have been devoted to constructing out the Starlink community.
The large and ever-growing constellation at present consists of about 6,500 energetic spacecraft, in accordance with astrophysicist and satellite tv for pc tracker Jonathan McDowell.
