The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches the year’s record 62nd mission

Update: 10:57 PM EST:

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at 10:47 p.m. EST (02:47 UTC), marking the historic 62nd orbital launch of the calendar year. The mission broke its own orbital launch record, which it set in 2022, when it launched 61 orbital missions over the course of a year.

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The first-stage booster supporting this mission, B1073, has completed its tenth launch and landing to date. This was the twenty-fourth Starlink mission launched from LC-39A and SpaceX’s sixty-ninth launch from that platform to date.

Updated at 6:56 PM EST:

SpaceX is now targeting the T-0’s takeoff time of 22:47 EST (02:47 UTC). This comes 90 minutes before the scheduled landing of Crew-6 astronauts and cosmonauts aboard Crew Dragon Endeavor.

SpaceX has an additional reservation time on September 3 for this launch at 23:05 EST (0305 ​​UTC). There are also five backup opportunities on Monday, September 4, from 6:59 PM EST (22:59 UTC) to 22:39 EST (0239 UTC on September 5).

A Falcon 9 rocket is being prepared Sunday for SpaceX’s 62nd orbital launch of the year. The previous record was reached in 2022, when the company carried out 61 launches. Kennedy Space Center’s Platform 39A, carrying 21 Starlink satellites, is scheduled to launch at 9:56 p.m. EDT (0156 UTC).

SpaceX has launched an orbital rocket on average every four days so far this year. Nine Falcon 9 aircraft were launched in August. A total of 62 launches in a calendar year would be the most achieved by a single commercial launch company.

“Our goal is to launch 10 Falcon flights a month by the end of this year, then 12 flights a month next year,” SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said in a post on social networking site X, formerly known as Twitter. .

This year’s 62nd launch for SpaceX will carry 21 satellites called V2 mini for the company’s Starlink internet service.

Within seconds of clearing the launch pad, the Falcon 9 will lift off and move on a southeast trajectory, aiming for an orbit inclined at an angle of 43 degrees to the equator. After separating from the second stage, and after about two and a half minutes of flight, the first stage booster will land on the “read-only instructions” drone ship, which will be parked in the Atlantic Ocean east of the Bahamas. About 390 miles (627 km) from the Cape. The first stage booster, number B1077, is performing its tenth task.

Two second-stage burners are needed to bring the satellites into the desired circular orbit. The 21 Starlinks will disconnect about an hour and five minutes after launch.

This will be the 16th launch of the next generation Starlink satellite model and is larger and has four times the bandwidth of previous versions. The full-size V2 Starlink satellites are scheduled to be launched by SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship, but the Starship’s delayed debut prompted the company to create a condensed version of the satellite so it could be launched from Falcon 9.

According to statistics compiled by Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who maintains a database of spaceflight, SpaceX has so far launched a total of 5,027 Starlink satellites into orbit.

And in early May, SpaceX announced that it had more than 1.5 million Starlink subscribers. The company’s Internet service is available in more than 60 countries.

Watch Cabo’s live previews on the launch pad live stream: