SpaceX is making ready to ship 20 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit on a Friday morning Falcon 9 rocket departing from Vandenberg House Power Base.
Onboard the Starlink 9-17 mission are 13 satellites that embrace the Direct to Cell functionality. Liftoff from House Launch Complicated 4 East (SLC-4E) is about for six:50 a.m. PDT (9:50 a.m. EDT, 1350 UTC).
Spaceflight Now may have reside protection starting about half-hour previous to liftoff.
The Falcon 9 booster supporting this mission, tail quantity B1075 within the SpaceX fleet, will fly for a thirteenth time. It beforehand supported the launches of the Transporter-11 rideshare mission, SDA-0A for the House Growth Company and 9 earlier batches of Starlink satellites.
Slightly greater than eight minutes after liftoff, B1075 will land on the SpaceX droneship ‘Of Course I Nonetheless Love You.’ If profitable, this would be the 102nd booster touchdown for OCISLY and the 350th booster touchdown so far.
Crew on deck
The California mission comes as each of SpaceX’s Florida launch pads are preoccupied with preparations for upcoming NASA missions. Launch Complicated 39A on the Kennedy House Middle is popping over from a Falcon 9 to a Falcon Heavy configuration to assist the Europa Clipper flight to the Galilean moon, Europa.
In the meantime, House Launch Complicated 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral House Power Station is making ready to launch its first crewed flight ever. That mission, Crew-9, will probably be SpaceX’s 207th orbital launch from SLC-40.
Commander and NASA astronaut Nick Hague together with mission specialist and cosmonaut Alexandr Gorbunov are scheduled to reach in Florida on Saturday afternoon. The pair will stay in quarantine till their deliberate launch date, which is not any sooner than Sept. 26.
As a result of NASA determined to convey the Boeing Starliner spacecraft again from the Worldwide House Station with out its crew, two seats on the SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom will stay unoccupied on the trip as much as the ISS.
This implies the launch would be the first operational flight of Dragon with solely two crew members. It’s additionally the primary two-person flight of Dragon because the Demo-2 mission in 2020, which featured former NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov are scheduled to reach at @NASAKennedy at roughly 1:30pm ET Saturday, Sept. 21, touching down on the Launch and Touchdown Facility forward of launch to @Space_Station NET Sept. 26: https://t.co/1qve83OKFj pic.twitter.com/F6hiXGOhP3
— NASA Business Crew (@Commercial_Crew) September 19, 2024
