The Starlink 6-110 mission will be the 18th flight this years supporting SpaceX’s broadband internet constellation. Liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is scheduled for 6:04:10 p.m. EST (2304:10 UTC).
The Starlink 6-104 mission added another 28 Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites into low Earth orbit. Liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station happened at 10:47 p.m. EST (0347 UTC).
Engineers ran into problems repressurizing the Artemis 2 moon rocket’s upper stage helium tanks overnight Friday, a problem that will require rolling the huge rocket off the launch pad and back to its processing hangar for troubleshooting. The work will push the already delayed mission from March to at least early April, officials said Saturday.
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 25 Starlink satellites from California early Saturday, after days of delay. Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base occurred at 1:04:19 a.m. PST (4:04:19 a.m. EST / 0904:19 UTC).
The practice countdown began Tuesday night, kicking off a carefully choreographed series of steps to ready the world’s most powerful operational rocket for what amounted to a simulated launch Thursday at 8:42 p.m. EST. Controllers then carried out additional tests to make sure the team can recycle, hold and restart an actual launch countdown as needed to handle unexpected problems.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said NASA will continue working with Boeing to make the Starliner a viable crew transport vehicle, adding that “sustained crew and cargo access to low Earth orbit will remain essential, and America benefits from competition and redundancy.”
The operation comes a week after NASA conducted a so-called ‘confidence test’ on Feb. 12, which was the process of loading some liquid hydrogen on the rocket’s core stage.
The Starlink 6-103 mission was the 10th orbital flight from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in 2026. Liftoff from pad 40 happened at 2:59:40 a.m. EST (0759:40 UTC) on Monday, Feb. 16.
The Crew Dragon docked at the space-facing port of the lab’s forward Harmony module at 3:15 p.m. EST, 34 hours after launch Friday from the Kennedy Space Center atop a Falcon 9 rocket.
The Starlink 17-13 mission also represented the 180th Falcon 9 launch from pad 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base. Liftoff happened 5:59:59 p.m. PST (8:59:59 p.m. EST / 0159:59 UTC).
This was the first time that the space agency happened to launch a crewed mission to the International Space Station on a Friday the 13th. The Crew-12 mission took flight onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 5:15 a.m. EST (1015 UTC).