SpaceX plans to make another attempt to launch a Falcon 9 carrying 22 Starlink satellites from the West Coast at 1:20 a.m. PT Sunday (4:20 a.m. ET/4:20 a.m. UTC Monday) is.
Early Sunday morning, the Falcon 9 countdown was halted with just minutes left. SpaceX said in a social media post that the spacecraft was “down” about seven minutes after its scheduled launch time. The reason for the cancellation of the launch attempt was not disclosed. The Starlink 7-7 mission was already delayed by a day.
On this year’s 55th Starlink delivery mission, the Falcon 9 will take off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and head southeast toward a 183-by-178-mile (295-by-286-kilometer) orbit. It is tilted at 53 degrees to the equator.
Spaceflight Now will provide live coverage of the Falcon 9 launch on its Launch Pad Live stream.
The first stage booster, on its 15th flight, has previously launched the Sentinel 6 Michael Freilich, DART, Transporter 7, Iridium OneWeb, and Space Development Agency Tranche 0B missions. Additionally, his nine previous Starlink delivery missions. Once burnout is complete, the first stage will land on the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You,” which is anchored about 400 miles (644 km) downstream in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California.
If all goes to plan, the deployment of the 22 V2 Mini Starlink satellites will take place a little over an hour after launch. The V2 Mini model was introduced earlier this year and is much larger than the V1.5 satellite. The latest model, with an upgraded antenna and larger solar panels, can provide four times the bandwidth of previous satellites.
SpaceX recently announced that it has signed up more than 2 million subscribers to its Starlink internet service in more than 60 countries. It has launched 5,445 satellites since 2019, according to statistics compiled by astronomer Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. spaceflight database. Of these satellites, 5,078 remain in orbit and 5,041 appear to be operating normally.
