Update June 23, 2:19 a.m. EDT: SpaceX landed the first stage booster on the droneship.
Following a last minute abort Sunday morning, SpaceX launched its 260th orbital flight from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in the predawn hours of Monday, June 23. The SpaceX launch director said there was a poor signal coming from the flight termination system on the Falcon 9 rocket that prevented a launch on Sunday.
The mission, dubbed Starlink 10-23, will add another 27 Starlink V2 Mini satellites to the company’s low Earth orbit constellation. Liftoff occurred at 1:58 a.m. EDT (0558 UTC) for its next launch attempt.
The 45th Weather Squadron forecast a 95 percent chance for favorable weather during Sunday’s launch window.
SpaceX used the first stage booster, tail number B1069, to launch the mission, which flewfor a 25th time. Some of its previous missions include CRS-24, Eutelsat’s Hotbird 13F and 20 batches of Starlink satellites.
A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1069 landed the droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’ This was the 114th touchdown for this vessel and the 465th booster landing to date.
The Starlink 10-23 mission was SpaceX’s 57th Starlink launch of the year out of a total of 76 Falcon 9 flights. The company aims to launch 170 Falcon rockets by the end of 2025.
