With hundreds of people looking on along the shores of Florida’s Space Coast, SpaceX launched its 45th Starlink launch of the year, which took off on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off on the Starlink 12-22 mission from Space Launch Complex 40 at 1:19 p.m. EDT (1719 UTC).
On Friday, the 45th Weather Squadron forecast an 80 percent chance for favorable weather at the opening of the launch window, which drops to 60 percent as the nearly four-hour opportunity progresses.
“Along the sea breeze front, isolated showers are expected to form during the early afternoon, but lingering dry air in the mid-levels will initially cap off their vertical development,” launch weather officers wrote. “However, by the mid to late afternoon, more robust thunderstorms will likely develop inland as heating and instability increases.
“Westerly winds aloft may steer those storms and their associated anvil clouds back towards the coast by the end of the launch window each day.”
SpaceX used its fourth most flown Falcon booster to support this mission, tail number B1069, which will fly for a 24th time. Its previous missions include SpaceX’s 24th Commercial Resupply Services flight to the International Space Station, OneWeb Mission 15 and 18 batches of Starlink satellites.
A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1069 landed on the droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’ This was the 110th touchdown for this vessel and the 451st booster landing to date.
Onboard the Falcon 9 rocket were 23 Starlink V2 Mini satellites, 13 of which have Direct to Cell capabilities. Prior to Saturday’s launch, SpaceX launched 234 of these cellular capable satellites into low Earth orbit.
