SpaceX is kicking off the weekend with a pair of Falcon 9 launches. Both flights are scheduled to depart Florida’s Space Coast within the same four-hour window of opportunity.
The Starlink 6-85 mission is the second scheduled to fly and will depart from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. SpaceX is targeting liftoff at 1:21 a.m. EST (0621 UTC).
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about an hour prior to launch.
Given the apparent proximity of the two missions, the 45th Weather Squadron issued identical forecasts for both missions, citing a greater than 95 percent chance for favorable weather at liftoff. After a few days of notable solar activity, launch weather officers dropped the potential for solar impacts down to a moderate risk on a low-moderate-high scale.
The Starlink 6-85 mission will launch with the Falcon 9 booster with the tail number B1078, which will fly for a 24th time. Its previous missions include Crew-6, USSF-124 and AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 1-5.
About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1078 will perform an autonomous landing on the drone ship, ‘Just Read the Instructions’, which is positioned in the Atlantic Ocean to the east of The Bahamas.
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