SpaceX is about to set a brand new rocket-reuse file.
One of many firm’s Falcon 9 rockets is scheduled to elevate off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral House Drive Station on Wednesday (Dec. 4), throughout a virtually two-hour window that opens at 5:13 a.m. EST (1013 GMT). The mission will ship 24 of SpaceX’s Starlink web satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO).
It will likely be the twenty fourth launch for this Falcon 9’s first stage, based on a SpaceX mission description. That can prime the outdated mark of 23 flights, which is held by three totally different boosters.
SpaceX will webcast the launch stay through X, starting about 5 minutes earlier than liftoff.
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If all goes based on plan, the Falcon 9’s first stage will come again to Earth for its twenty fourth touchdown about eight minutes after liftoff. It would contact down vertically on the drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas,” which will likely be stationed within the Atlantic Ocean.
The rocket’s higher stage, in the meantime, will deploy the 24 Starlink satellites in LEO about 65 minutes after launch.
Wednesday’s mission will notch yet one more milestone for SpaceX’s Falcon rocket household, which consists of the workhorse Falcon 9 and the extra highly effective Falcon Heavy. SpaceX has launched greater than 400 profitable Falcon 9 missions so far and has landed Falcon first levels 377 occasions.
Starlink is the most important satellite tv for pc constellation ever assembled. It presently consists of greater than 6,750 operational satellites, and that quantity is rising on a regular basis.