SpaceX chalks up another Friday night launch from the Cape
SpaceX knocked out another Starlink launch from the Space Coast on Friday night.
A Falcon 9 carrying 23 of the company’s internet satellites managed a liftoff at 10:37 p.m., the very end of a four-hour window from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40.
The first-stage booster made its 14th flight with a recovery landing downrange in the Atlantic on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas. It marked a record turnaround for the droneship that supported a Starlink flight from Cape Canaveral just under 84 hours earlier.
This was the 41st launch from the Space Coast with all but two coming from SpaceX.
NASA astronauts back at it to try for 1st human spaceflight of Boeing’s Starliner
United Launch Alliance has flown the other two, but has its third lined up for Saturday with the planned launch of an Atlas V topped with a Boeing CST-100 Starliner taking NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on a trip to the International Space Station.
That launch from Canaveral’s nearby Space Launch Complex 41 is targeting a 12:25 p.m. liftoff.