Bad weather along the launch corridor for a planned human spaceflight from Kennedy Space Center has prompted at least a two-day delay, so SpaceX took the opportunity to shoehorn in a launch without humans from nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday.

Plans had been to prep all day for the Crew-8 launch that was set to lift off from KSC early Friday, but SpaceX instead launched a Falcon 9 from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 carrying 23 of the company’s Starlink satellites, lifting off at 10:30 a.m.

After a quick leap, Falcon 9’s first stage has completed its 11th mission, landing on the Just Read The Instructions droneship in the Atlantic Ocean pic.twitter.com/OFrx4S2zbj

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 29, 2024

 

The first-stage booster for the mission flew for the 11th time and made another successful recovery downrange in the Atlantic on the droneship Just Read the Instructions.

Now delayed until at least Saturday, the Crew-8 mission aims to take up three NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut to the International Space Station. NASA and SpaceX chose to delay because of poor offshore conditions for the flight track of the Crew Dragon Endeavour, including high winds and waves along the eastern seaboard.

SpaceX launch this week could end NASA astronaut’s nearly 15-year wait to get to space

 

 

“In the unlikely case of an abort during launch or the flight of Dragon, the wind and wave conditions must be within acceptable conditions for the safe recovery of the crew and spacecraft,” NASA stated on an update to its website.

Now the Falcon 9 carrying NASA’s Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps as well as Roscosmos’ Alexander Grebenkin is targeting 11:16 p.m. Saturday to lift off from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A. Docking with the ISS won’t happen until Sunday afternoon.

NASA as a rule has requested that SpaceX stand down from any launch attempts within 24 hours of a human spaceflight, so with the Crew-8 delayed by nearly 48 hours, SpaceX wasted no time to take the launch opportunity.

The result is the 13th launch from the Space Coast in 2023, with all by one coming from SpaceX.

The company has also flown seven times from its California launch operations so this mission makes it 19 for the year among its three pads on each coast, or nearly a pace of three launches per week.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said the company could see as many as 150 launches in 2023, including the lion’s share of what could be more than 100 total from the Space Coast among all launch providers.

United Launch Alliance was the lone other launch with its first Vulcan Centaur rocket lifting off in January. Its next launch is slated to be an Atlas V no earlier than April 22 on the first crewed launch of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner, also headed for the ISS.