Via Satellite reports, “SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket suffered an engine failure during a Starlink mission on July 11, losing 20 Starlink satellites and triggering a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigation. This is a rare incident for the rocket which hasn’t had a major failure since 2015. The mission took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:36 p.m. PT on July 11, carrying 20 direct-to-cell Starlink satellites.” Full Story (Via Satellite)
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SpaceX Experiences Engine Failure In Flight
(The Launch Pad; YouTube)
SPACE reports, “SpaceX launched 23 more of its Starlink internet satellites from California on Monday (March 11), in the second leg of a spaceflight doubleheader.“ SpaceX’s Falcon 9 lifted off at 12:09 a.m. EDT from Vandenberg Space Force Base carrying the Starlink payload. Full Story (SPACE)
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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 23 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 12:09 a.m. EDT on March 11, 2024
(VideoFromSpace; YouTube)
Aviation Week reports, “SpaceX completed a pair of overlapping Falcon 9 missions on March 4.” One mission launched 23 Starlink satellites into orbit from Florida, while another, Transporter-10, launched from the West Coast on a mission to deploy rideshare satellites. According to the report, “the launches occurred at 5:05 p.m. and 6:56 p.m. EST from Vandenberg’s SFB’s Space Launch Complex 4 East and Cape Canaveral SFS’s Space Launch Complex 40, respectively.” Full Story (Aviation Week)
Spaceflight Now reports that at 10:30 a.m. EST Thursday, SpaceX launched 23 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The Starlink 6-40 mission marked a rare Leap Day launch from the Cape, as it “was just the fourth time in history that an orbital launch took place on Feb. 29.” Full Story (Spaceflight Now)
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SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites on Leap Day
(VideoFromSpace; YouTube)
Spaceflight Now reports “SpaceX launched its biggest batch of second generation Starlink Satellites to date on Sunday.” The launch was the first featuring a batch of 24 Starlink V2 Mini satellites, the most launched at once to date. Liftoff occurred at 5:06 p.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Full Story (Spaceflight Now)
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SpaceX launches a Falcon 9 rocket with 24 second-generation Starlink internet satellites
(Spaceflight Now; YouTube)
Spaceflght Now reports that the milestone comes as a result of the 34th dedicated Starlink launch of the year for SpaceX. “Liftoff of the Starlink 6-58 mission from Space Launch Complex 40 happened at 8:53 p.m. EDT (0053 UTC). This was SpaceX’s 34th dedicated Starlink launch of 2024,” which placed another 23 Starlink satellites into orbit, bringing the total number in orbit to 5,999. Full Story (Spaceflight Now)
Spaceflight Now reports, “SpaceX completed its latest Falcon 9 launch from pad 39A NASA’s Kennedy Space Center early Wednesday evening. The Starlink 6-51 mission came about a week-and-a-half after the launch of its first Bandwagon-1 rideshare mission from that same launch pad.” Liftoff occurred at 5:26 p.m. EDT. Full Story (Spaceflight Now)
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SpaceX launches a Falcon 9 with 23 Starlink satellites from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
(Spaceflight Now; YouTube)
Spaceflight Now reports “SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Monday evening with 23 Starlink satellites on board,” marking the 175th SpaceX launch “from its workhorse pad to date.” Full Story (Spaceflight Now)
Spaceflight Now reports that a SpaceX Falcon 9 launched the Starlink 7-16 mission Monday at 7:28 p.m. PT from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandendberg Space Force Base in California. The mission took place as SpaceX prepares to launch a Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station later this week. Full Story (SPACE)
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SpaceX Starlink 7-16 Launch
(The Launch Pad; YouTube)
UPI reports that SpaceX “launched a Falcon 9 rocket with a payload of 22 Starlink satellites into space early Friday from Florida’s famed Cape Canaveral, after having scrubbed the launch of a separate mission Thursday night.” The rocket “launched at 12:01 a.m. EDT Friday from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.” Up to four backup launch opportunities “were available to SpaceX to launch the nearly two dozen satellites into low-Earth orbit where they will join Starlink’s constellation of orbitals that provide high-speed, low-latency Internet around the globe.” The launch occurred shortly “after SpaceX scrubbed a Flacon Heavy mission that was to liftoff late Thursday.” No reason for “aborting the mission was immediately made public.” The first-stage booster “used in the early Friday launch flew its 15th mission.” After deploying its payload “into space, the launch vehicle returned to Earth where it landed upon the autonomous A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.” The launch “was SpaceX’s 50th of the year and 249th overall.” Full Story (UPI)
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Starlink Mission, 26 August 2023
(SpaceX; YouTube)
Bloomberg reports that SpaceX is “discussing an initial public offering for its fast-growing Starlink satellite business as soon as late 2024, people with knowledge of the matter said, in a bid to capitalize on robust demand for communications via space.” To get ready, SpaceX “has been moving the satellite unit’s assets to a wholly owned subsidiary that would ultimately be spun off in the IPO, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the conversations are private.” Full Story (Bloomberg)
UPI reports that SpaceX “launched a Falcon 9 rocket with a payload of 22 Starlink satellites into space early Friday from Florida’s famed Cape Canaveral, after having scrubbed the launch of a separate mission Thursday night.” The rocket “launched at 12:01 a.m. EDT Friday from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.” Up to four backup launch opportunities “were available to SpaceX to launch the nearly two dozen satellites into low-Earth orbit where they will join Starlink’s constellation of orbitals that provide high-speed, low-latency Internet around the globe.” The launch occurred shortly “after SpaceX scrubbed a Flacon Heavy mission that was to liftoff late Thursday.” No reason for “aborting the mission was immediately made public.” The first-stage booster “used in the early Friday launch flew its 15th mission.” After deploying its payload “into space, the launch vehicle returned to Earth where it landed upon the autonomous A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.” The launch “was SpaceX’s 50th of the year and 249th overall.” Full Story (UPI)
UPI reports that SpaceX “launched its latest round of Starlink communication satellites from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida just before midnight Saturday.” The mission had “been scrubbed Friday, with SpaceX saying a static fire of the rocket’s main engines would need to be performed, giving a hint to a possible rocket hardware issue.” The Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage, which “launched the 54 satellites, safely returned to Earth, touching down on the SpaceX drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas, marking a record-tying 16th safe launch and landing of the rocket’s booster.” The first stage of another Falcon 9 rocket “launched on July 9 also landed safely on Earth for the 16th time, setting a record for the company. Saturday’s launch tied that record.” The return of Saturday’s first stage “marked the 207th time SpaceX has safely returned the first stage.” Full Story (UPI)
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Starlink Mission
On Saturday, July 15 at 11:50 p.m. ET, a SpaceX Falcon 9 launched 54 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida.
(SpaceX; YouTube)
SPACE reports Starlink satellites had “to swerve more than 25,000 times between Dec. 1, 2022, and May 31, 2023 to avoid potentially dangerous approaches to other spacecraft and orbital debris,” according to filings with the Federal Communications Commission. The frequency of collision avoidance maneuvers by Starlink satellites is “about double the number of avoidance maneuvers reported by SpaceX in the previous six-month period that ran from June to November 2022.” University of Southampton astronautics professor Hugh Lewis says, “Right now, the number of maneuvers is growing exponentially. It’s been doubling every six months, and the problem with exponential trends is that they get to very large numbers very quickly.” Lewis predicts that regulatory intervention will be necessary to control the growth of space debris in low earth orbit, or else “collisions will soon become a regular part of the space business.” Full Story (SPACE)
Reuters reports that Blue Origin “was awarded its first interplanetary NASA contract on Thursday to launch a mission next year to study the magnetic field around Mars, the U.S. space agency and company said.” Plans call for Blue Origin’s “recently developed New Glenn heavy-lift rocket to blast off with NASA’s dual-spacecraft ESCAPADE mission in late 2024 from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, the agency said.” It will take “the identical twin ESCAPADEs, short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, about 11 months to reach Mars orbit, where they will capture data from the planet’s magnetosphere and its interactions with solar radiation.” New Glenn, “with a reusable first stage designed to be flown on at least 25 missions, is named for pioneering NASA astronaut John Glenn, who became the first American to orbit Earth in 1962.” Full Story (Reuters)
The Wall Street Journal (Subscription Publication) reports SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said the company had moved to limit the use of its satellite-internet service, Starlink, for military purposes. Full Story (Wall Street Journal – Subscription Publication)
The Daily Mail (UK) reports that SpaceX announced “that its Starlink satellite internet service provider has over a million active subscribers. ‘Starlink now has more than 1,000,000 active subscribers – thank you to all customers and members of the Starlink team who contributed to this milestone,’ the official SpaceX Twitter account wrote on Monday.” The news comes “at the end of a year in which the service, which provides low-latency, high-speed internet at an affordable cost – often to remote areas without existing WiFi – has expanded to yachts, cruise ships and RVs.” Full Story (Daily Mail)
CNET News reports that with “the addition of the McMurdo Station in Antarctica, SpaceX says its orbit-based Starlink broadband service now reaches all seven continents.” The service “has just recently become active in Africa, starting in Mozambique and Nigeria, and is rolling out by the end of the year in the Philippines to begin making inroads in southeast Asia.” Full Story (CNET News)
The AP reports that SpaceX “launched 51 Starlink satellites into orbit from California on Monday night.” The Falcon 9’s reusable first stage successfully landed on an oceangoing platform in the Pacific Ocean. Full Story (Associated Press)
Reuters reports that SpaceX expects that Starlink will “be able to provide continuous global coverage by around September but will then need to seek regulatory approvals, its president Gwynne [Shotwell] said on Tuesday.” She said, “We’ve successfully deployed 1,800 or so satellites and once all those satellites reach their operational orbit, we will have continuous global coverage, so that should be like September timeframe. … But then we have regulatory work to go into every country and get approved to provide telecoms services.” According to Shotwell, the company currently is offering beta services in 11 countries. Full Story (Reuters)
