Live coverage: SpaceX to launch 21 Starlink satellites on Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral
SpaceX is preparing to launch a Falcon 9 rocket with its latest batch of Starlink V2 Mini satellites Friday afternoon.
The mission, dubbed Starlink 12-9, will be the 10th dedicated Starlink mission of the year and the 11th with Starlink satellites on board. Liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is set for 1:52 p.m. EST (1852 UTC).
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about an hour prior to liftoff. The rocket will fly in a southeasterly trajectory as it heads away from the Cape.
Coming into the launch opportunity, the 45th Weather Squadron, based at Patrick Space Force Base, forecast a greater than 95 percent chance of favorable conditions for launch on Friday. It cited light winds around liftoff at 12 mph. or less and the presence of cumulus clouds as the only potential constraint.
“Surface high pressure situated across the northern Atlantic with the associated ridge axis sprawled across Florida will ensure a continuation of patchy late night and morning fog and low clouds,” launch weather officers wrote on Thursday. “Otherwise, fair weather is anticipated for both the primary and backup launch opportunities.”
Among the 21 Starlink satellites onboard the Starlink 12-9 mission are 13 that have Direct to Cell capabilities. Prior to Friday, SpaceX launched 466 of these DTC Starlink satellites and began rolling out some beta testing in the United States.
SpaceX will use the Falcon 9 first stage booster tail number 1078 for Friday’s flight. This will be its 17th launch after supporting missions like USSF-124, Crew-6 and 12 previous batches of Starlink satellites.
A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1078 will target a landing on the SpaceX droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’ If successful, it will be 97th booster landing for ASOG and the 406th landing for SpaceX to date.
SpaceX will also use the recovery vessel, named ‘Doug,’ to retrieve the payload fairing halves once they splash down in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The vessel was named for former NASA astronaut Doug Hurley, one half of the pair who flew the Demo-2 mission, which was SpaceX’s first mission sending crew to and from the International Space Station.
The company is currently planning for the Crew-10 launch as well as a private astronaut mission to the ISS in partnership with Axiom Space. SpaceX also helped train a commercial astronaut mission that will use a Dragon spacecraft that won’t dock with the space station, but instead fly over the poles over a roughly three-day flight.