The Orlando Sentinel reports the Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at 10:50 am with a payload of 54 of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites. This would be the 31st Starlink launch this year, and 65th since 2019, with over 3,500 satellites in orbit at this point.
Full Story (The Orlando Sentinel)
Tag: Cape Canaveral
SpaceX Working to Upgrade Cape Canaveral Launch Pad
Space News reports that while SpaceX is preparing to launch the Crew-5 mission with NASA, the company is “also starting work to host cargo and crew launches from Space Launch Complex 40 at neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.” SpaceX VP for Build and Flight Reliability Bill Gerstenmaier said, “We’ve already started the work to begin the preparations for pad 40. We’ve ordered some hardware, put some contracts into place.” Space News adds, “The effort to build up a crew and cargo capability at SLC-40 is driven by SpaceX’s work to host Starship launches at LC-39A. With that vehicle yet to make its first orbital launch attempt, NASA raised concerns that a Starship launch failure at LC-39A could damage the existing launch infrastructure there and affect NASA’s ability to send cargo and crews to the ISS.”
Full Story (Space News)
ULA to Launch US Space Force Satellites on Thursday
Spaceflight Now reports that United Launch Alliance (ULA) teams “at Cape Canaveral rolled an Atlas 5 rocket to its launch pad Wednesday, moving the launcher into position for liftoff Thursday evening with a pair of geostationary satellites for the U.S. Space Force.” The rollout “began shortly after 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT), when the Atlas 5 emerged from the Vertical Integration Facility south of the launch pad. The 196-foot-tall (59.7-meter-tall) rocket rode a mobile launch platform along rail tracks to Space Launch Complex 41, the East Coast home of Atlas 5 launch operations.” Launch is set for 6 p.m. EDT Thursday, “the opening of a two-hour launch window. There is a 60% chance of favorable weather for Thursday’s launch window, according to the Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron.”
Full Story (Spaceflight Now)
SpaceX to Make Three Launches this Weekend
Spaceflight Now reports that SpaceX “teams in Florida and California are preparing for three missions from three launch pads in three days, beginning Friday with a launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with a reusable Falcon 9 booster flying for a record 13th time.” Friday’s flight will “deploy 53 more Starlink internet satellites, followed by a launch Saturday from Vandenberg Space Force Base with a German military radar observation satellite, then another mission from Cape Canaveral early Sunday with a commercial Globalstar messaging and data relay spacecraft.” The rapid-fire launch schedule “would mark the fastest sequence of flights by SpaceX since the company’s founding.”
Full Story (Spaceflight Now)
SpaceX Conducts Starlink Mission Launch and Successful Booster Landing
Spaceflight Now reports SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday at 1:51 p.m. EDT carrying 53 Starlink satellites into orbit thus “growing the company’s commercial internet network [as] ground teams seek to increase the already-blistering pace of Falcon 9 rocket missions.” Launch, initially scheduled to take place at 11:14 a.m.,
was delayed “due to high winds at the Florida spaceport.” The mission, named Starlink 4-14, marked “SpaceX’s 15th Falcon 9 launch of the year, and the 149th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket since the workhorse launcher debuted on June 4, 2010.” After the launch, the rocket made a successful landing on the Just Read the Instructions drone ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
Full Story (Spaceflight Now)
More Info (WFTV9)
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SpaceX to Reuse Falcon 9 Booster for Record 12th Time
Spaceflight Now reports that SpaceX “raised a veteran Falcon 9 booster vertical on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral late Thursday, ready for a record-setting 12th mission Friday night with 53 more Starlink internet satellites.” The launch “will mark the 12th flight of a Falcon 9 booster that debuted in March 2019 with the unpiloted test flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, which paved the way for subsequent SpaceX launches with astronauts. This booster, designated B1051, has launched from all three of SpaceX’s active pads in Florida and California.”
Full Story (Reuters)
GOES-T Satellite Launched Tuesday
The Washington Post reports on Tuesday, the United States launched “its latest and greatest weather satellite, which will provide constant monitoring over the Western Hemisphere and help track fires, hurricanes, lightning, smoke plumes, coastal fog, landslides, atmospheric rivers, dust storms and more.” Some instruments will also “stare at the sun, providing data on incoming space weather that could disrupt technology on Earth.” The NOAA GOES-T launched “at 4:38 p.m. Eastern from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.” The satellite is expected “to be fully operational by early 2023 and will oversee the U.S. West, Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico, Central America and Pacific Ocean.” Pam Sullivan, system program director for the GOES-R Series Program, said in a virtual news conference, “NOAA’s geostationary satellites provide the only continuous coverage of weather and hazardous environmental conditions in the Western Hemisphere, protecting the lives and properties of the 1 billion people who live and work there.”
Full Story (Washington Post)
SpaceX Scrubs Thursday Falcon 9 Launch
Spaceflight Now reports that SpaceX “scrubbed the planned launch of an Italian radar remote sensing satellite Thursday due to dismal weather at Cape Canaveral.” The Falcon 9 rocket is to launch at 6:11 p.m. EST Friday. The rocket is to carry a COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation (CSG) radar surveillance satellite “into a polar orbit for the Italian Space Agency and the Italian Ministry of Defense.”
Full Story (Spaceflight Now)
Weather Downgraded for Thursday Launch at Cape Canaveral
Florida Today reports that US Space Force calculations “show a downgraded forecast for SpaceX’s next launch from Cape Canaveral on Thursday, a mission that will include sonic booms as the Falcon 9 booster returns to the Space Coast for landing.” The weather could “begin to clear before the liftoff window at 6:11 p.m. EST Thursday.” The latest forecast “dropped the ‘percent go’ probability at Launch Complex 40 to 60%, a slight downgrade from the previous version.” Landing conditions for the return of the Falcon 9 rocket booster to Cape Canaveral’s Landing Zone 1 were downgraded from “low risk” to “moderate risk.”
Full Story (Florida Today)
Kennedy Space Center Evolves to Serve New Generation of Space Explorers
Speaker: Robert Cabana, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center
By Duane Hyland, AIAA Communications (2008-2017)
Long considered the nerve center of the U.S. space program, the site of NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, has witnessed every manned mission the U.S. has started. With the end of the space-shuttle era in 2011, Kennedy faced an uncertain future with many worrying that the best days of the center were behind it.
Not so, according to Robert Cabana, director of the Kennedy Space Center. Cabana told an audience at “The Transformation of the Kennedy Space Center,” a lecture during the 2015 AIAA Propulsion and Energy Forum in Orlando, Florida, that Kennedy is “rapidly evolving to meet the needs of a new generation of space explorers,” who will need a safe place to leave from and return to as they go about their explorations.
Cabana explained that the center is preparing to host the next generation of launchers and vehicles for the U.S. space program, chief among them the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft. He said the Kennedy also is expanding to meet the needs of commercial space customers. In order to host these new generations of rockets, NASA and its private space company partners are building new buildings, constructing new launch pad complexes and modifying older complexes.
Cabana said the projects include a revamp of the Vehicle Assembly Building; transformation of the Orbiter Processing Facility into a Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility; a rebuild of Firing Room 1 — the room that launched the Apollo missions; and several other changes. Cabana also said that two new launch pad sites were under development: “one north of 39B and one between 39A and 41.”
Another change, according to Cabana, include the Space Exploration Technology Corp.’s redevelopment of iconic launch pad 39A — which launched nearly every Apollo mission — into a facility to launch its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. Additionally, Boeing Co. has taken over part of the Orbiter Processing Facility for its X-37B unmanned spacecraft project. Kennedy also has teamed with the state of Florida and NASA’s Space Life Sciences Laboratory to create Exploration Park, a research and development facility on the center’s property that will serve as a hub for private enterprise and private-public partnerships.
Among the more challenging of the refurbishment projects, Cabana said, has been the removal of the more than 3 miles of 50-year-old copper wiring and other equipment from the firing control rooms tunnel between the rooms and launch complexes.
Cabana explained that the end of the space-shuttle era brought about a 43 percent reduction in the center’s workforce. However, despite the losses, and the end of the iconic program, Cabana said, “Kennedy Space Center is set to become a thriving hub of government space programs, private space programs and private-public partnerships” that will give explorers a safe place to return.