SpaceX completed its fourth Falcon 9 rocket launch since Sunday with a mission carrying the company’s latest batch of Starlink internet satellites.
Liftoff of the Starlink 6-66 mission pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station happened at 11:07 a.m. EST (1607 UTC) on Thursday. Space Force meteorologists gave the rocket a 90 percent chance of good weather ahead of launch, with liftoff winds being the only concern at the launch site.
The launch came days after SpaceX’s largely successful Starship Flight 6 mission on Tuesday, which showcased the first daytime splashdown of its Ship upper stage.
The Falcon 9 first stage booster for this mission, with the tail number B1069, launched for a 20th time. It previously supported the launches of CRS-24, OneWeb 15 and 15 previous Starlink flights.
A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, the first stage booster landed on the SpaceX droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’ This was the 86th booster landing on ASOG and the 372nd booster landing to date.
Emphasizing the importance of reuse for the company, in a post-launch statement on X, formerly Twitter, SpaceX noted that at least one half of the payload fairings that flew on Thursday’s mission completed its 21st flight, becoming the launch leader.
Falcon 9’s first stage lands on the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship pic.twitter.com/YH1SaTr9VC
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 21, 2024
On Monday, Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s vice president of launch, noted that there were 21 more launches on the company’s launch manifest that it wanted to complete before the end of the year.
If SpaceX is able to notch all of them before the end of the year, it will close out 2024 with 136 orbital launches. Two of this year’s launches were Falcon Heavy rockets. The Falcon 9 has had a single failure this year on the Starlink 9-3 mission which suffered an upper stage issue.
21 launches remain on the manifest in 2024 with 43 days to go https://t.co/mYZUh2s2Dh
— Kiko Dontchev (@TurkeyBeaver) November 18, 2024
