NASA and SpaceX have set April 22 as the target launch date for the next Crew Dragon flight to the International Space Station. The four-person crew will be the first to ride a previously-flown Falcon 9 booster and a reused Dragon spacecraft, and a NASA official said this week that the launcher and capsule are in “really good shape” as refurbishment wraps up at Cape Canaveral.
Launching through a blanket of low-hanging clouds and light mist, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket thundered into the sky over Florida’s Space Coast early Thursday and delivered 60 more Starlink internet satellites to orbit. The rocket’s first stage touched down on SpaceX’s floating landing platform in the Atlantic Ocean to complete its eighth trip to space and back.
After a terminal countdown abort Sunday night, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket with the next 60 Starlink internet satellites Thursday at 3:24 a.m. EST (0824 GMT). The Falcon 9 took off from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, and its first stage booster successfully landed on SpaceX’s offshore drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
Launch companies and U.S. Space Force range officials at Cape Canaveral are reassessing long-standing weather rules, looking at beefing up rocket defenses against lightning, and considering strategies to prepare for two different launch windows on a given day to guard against weather delays, something SpaceX may demonstrate with a Falcon 9 launch early Thursday.
SpaceX will not be making a Falcon 9 launch attempt Tuesday night. The next opportunities to launch the Falcon 9 with 60 Starlink satellites from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center will come at 3:24 a.m. EST (0824 GMT) or 5:42 a.m. EST (0942 GMT) Thursday. This change in launch time suggests SpaceX will target a different orbital plane within the Starlink constellation.
A senior SpaceX official said this week that “heat damage” led to the failure of a Falcon 9 booster during a landing attempt Feb. 15, but the company will press on with more launches and will likely surpass the 10-flight threshold on one of its reusable rockets soon. The next Falcon 9 launch, using a booster flying on its eighth mission, is scheduled for liftoff from Florida with 60 more Starlink internet satellites Sunday night.
A 29-year-old cancer survivor, now a physician’s assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, will blast off aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule later this year for a flight dedicated to raising money for the Memphis medical center. It will be the first orbital spaceflight with no professional astronauts on board.
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