SpaceX is ready to interrupt its personal document for variety of orbital launches carried out by one firm, which it set at 96 in 2023. The Starlink 10-10 mission will put SpaceX at 97 orbital flights with two-and-a-half months nonetheless remaining within the yr.
The Falcon 9 launch additionally marks SpaceX’s one hundredth complete launch of 2024, together with three suborbital launches of its Starship rocket from southern Texas. Liftoff is ready for 1:34 a.m. EDT (0534 UTC) from Area Launch Advanced 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station.
Spaceflight Now could have stay protection starting about one hour previous to liftoff.
The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, tail quantity B1080 within the SpaceX fleet, will launch for an eleventh time. It beforehand launched two non-public astronaut missions to the Worldwide Area Station (Axiom-2 and Axiom-3), two Cargo Dragon missions to the ISS (NG-21 and CRS-30) and the Euclid area telescope for the European Area Company (ESA).
A bit greater than eight minutes after liftoff, B1080 is ready to landing on the SpaceX droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’ If profitable, this would be the 81st booster touchdown for ASOG and the 353rd booster touchdown thus far.
Onboard the mission are 23 Starlink V2 Mini satellites. This would be the first launch of Starlink satellites for the reason that higher stage anomaly occurred through the Crew-9 mission on Sept. 28. The final batch of Starlink satellites launched through the Starlink 9-8 mission on Sept. 25.
Throughout the Crew-9 mission, after the Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft separated from the higher stage, the Merlin Vacuum Engine fired for an extra 500 milliseconds through the deorbit burn, which triggered the stage to maneuver exterior of its deliberate touchdown zone to dissipate over the Pacific Ocean.
The difficulty was investigated by SpaceX in a mishap investigation overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration and checked by NASA in an impartial assessment. For the reason that mishap, SpaceX efficiently launched each a Falcon 9 rocket on the Hera asteroid mission for ESA and a Falcon Heavy rocket on the Europa Clipper mission for NASA.
