The Orlando (FL) Sentinel reports that the business “of sending humans into space has not yet risen to the levels seen during the space shuttle program, but 2024 could see the most U.S.-based orbital launches in 15 years.” There are seven missions “slated from either Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral Space Force Station that look to place 26 humans into orbit.” It’s the highest number “of crew launching from the Space Coast since 2009.” That year “saw five shuttle launches with 35 humans on board.”
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Tag: Space Coast
SpaceX Marks Space Coast Record with 60th Launch this Year
The Orlando (FL) Sentinel reported another Space Coast night launch “Friday marked the 60th liftoff from the Space Coast for the year, this time with a booster flying for a record 18th time.” A Falcon 9 carrying “another 23 of Elon Musk’s company’s Starlink satellites took off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 8:37 p.m.”
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SpaceX Starlink 119 launch and Falcon 9 first stage landing, 4 November 2023
(SciNews; YouTube)
Four Crewed Launches Scheduled for Space Coast Before Summer
The Orlando Sentinel reports that in the next few months, “14 more humans could launch from U.S. soil as SpaceX has three missions set to lift off from Kennedy Space Center on Crew Dragons,” while The Boeing Company “looks to send its CST-100 Starliner up to the International Space Station for the first time with people on board.” Kathryn Lueders, NASA’s associate administrator for the Space Operations Mission Directorate, said, “We’re heading into, I would say one of the busiest increments in the history of station. We have a string of critical missions coming up.” Upcoming launches include “not only crewed flights from the Space Coast, but [also] a replacement Soyuz capsule to be sent up from Russia to the station for one damaged by micrometeorites and resupply missions from SpaceX, Northrop Grumman and Russia in the next four months.”
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Florida’s Space Coast Adds Another Rocket with ULA’s Vulcan Centaur’s Arrival
The Orlando Sentinel reports that the Space Coast “has another new rocket in town as the United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur arrived by ship over the weekend ahead of its first-ever launch this year.” The replacement for ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV rockets “still has testing to endure at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, as well as the integration of its payloads, but the hardware separated into three massive parts was offloaded from the company’s RocketShip transport on Sunday.” It arrived at Port Canaveral “the day before after traveling more than 2,000 miles by river and ocean rom ULA’s factory in Decatur, Alabama.” Its arrival “marks the fourth new orbital-class rocket to call the Space Coast home in just over a year joining NASA’s Space Launch System that took off from Kennedy Space Center for the first time last November on the Artemis I mission, small rocket provider Astra Space’s Rocket 3.3, which had two launches from Cape Canaveral, and Relativity Space’s Terran-1, a 3D-printed rocket awaiting its first-ever launch early this year from Canaveral as well.”
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Space Florida Will Continue to Enjoy Explosive Growth in Years to Come
The Orlando (FL) Sentinel reported that Florida’s burgeoning aerospace industry “will grow at a juggernaut pace in the coming years, adding more jobs and other financial benefits to the state, according to the agency whose job it is to attract such enterprises.” Frank DiBello, President and CEO of Space Florida, which is Florida’s aerospace economic development agency, said in a quarterly call with reporters, “We expect in the next five years to be making an economic impact on average of over a billion dollars a year to the state’s economy.” About 6,000 jobs “across 15 companies were added to the economy in 2022, including at least some of announced workforce additions of 250 jobs by OneWeb Satellites, 1,800 from Northrop Grumman, 52 from SIMCOM Aviation and an undisclosed number of new employees at SpaceX and other companies.” With 150 projects “across an array of space-related industries in the works, DiBello said 2023 should see many more new jobs in the years ahead, noting that the state used to reach agreement on about six to eight projects, in general, a year.”
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Weather Expected to be Good for Launches Scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday
The Orlando Sentinel reports, “Space Coast weather looks to be amenable” for “a Wednesday morning launch from SpaceX and a Thursday evening liftoff from” The Boeing Company. On Wednesday, there “is another Starlink mission from SpaceX launching from Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39-A,” and “on Thursday evening, Boeing and NASA look to send up the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex-41.”
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