Lifting off from House Launch Advanced 40 at Cape Canaveral House Pressure Station in Florida at 11:35 a.m. ET (15:35 UTC), a Falcon 9 efficiently deployed 56 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit.
Initially scheduled to launch at 9:56 a.m., thunderstorms within the space pressured SpaceX to delay the launch only a bit to discover a window within the climate.
Liftoff! pic.twitter.com/OUNkJ5gCD1
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 23, 2023
This batch of Starlinks was launched to the Southeast at a 43-degree orbital inclination. The satellites have been deployed from the 2nd stage roughly 1 hour and 5 minutes after launch, with the completion of the Starlink 5-12 mission, this brings the entire variety of Starlink satellites in orbit to 4,698. This comes simply 1 day after launching 47 Starlink satellites from California. These 103 model 1.5 Starlink satellites will now bear checkouts as they use their onboard thrusters to lift themselves to their operational orbit.
The Falcon 9 launching this mission was Booster 1069, which accomplished its eighth mission following a profitable landing on the droneship ‘Simply Learn the Directions,’ which was positioned ~640 km downrange. This booster has now supported the launches of 4 Starlink missions, 3 communications satellite tv for pc missions, and the CRS-24 resupply mission to the Worldwide House Station.
Falcon 9’s first stage has landed on the Simply Learn the Directions droneship pic.twitter.com/K6q6xHBDIF
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 23, 2023
SpaceX additionally flew two flight-proven fairings on this launch, with one half launching for the seventh time and the opposite half for the tenth, the latter of which is a file for SpaceX in fairing reuse. Every fairing half value roughly $3 million, so this can be a important financial savings for the corporate.
That’s now 43 orbital launches for SpaceX for the yr up to now, effectively on tempo to interrupt their file of 61 launches that was set final yr. Of these 43 launches, 41 have been Falcon 9 launches, and a pair of have been Falcon Heavy launches.
At the moment scheduled subsequent for SpaceX is the launch of the Euclid House Telescope for the European House Company no sooner than July 1st.
Catch the replay of right this moment’s launch beneath!
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