SpaceX sends up Spanish satellite for 10th Space Coast launch of the year

SpaceX sends up Spanish satellite for 10th Space Coast launch of the year

SpaceX sent up the Space Coast’s 10th launch of the year Wednesday night, but skipped any landing attempt of its booster.

A Falcon 9 rocket on the SpainSat NG I mission carrying a communications satellite developed by Spanish company Hisdesat and the European Space Agency lifted off at 8:34 p.m. from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-A.

This was the final launch of the first-stage booster, which made its 21st flight, but SpaceX had to expend more fuel than normal to get the satellite on its way to a geosynchronous transfer orbit. As such, there was no recovery effort for the booster.

The booster had previously flown the SES-22, ispace’s HAKUTO-R MISSION 1, Amazonas-6, CRS-27, Bandwagon-1, GSAT-20, Thuraya-4 and 13 Starlink missions. It’s one of several that had surpassed 20 launches, although shy of the fleet leading booster that has flown 24 times so far.

SpaceX has flown all but one of the missions so far this year on the Space Coast including three previous from KSC along with six from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn debut was the other launch so far.

Ready for 156 Space Coast launches this year, Space Force targets bottlenecks

The 10 launches in January is a little short of the 13 on average the Space Force is prepared for in 2025 with as many as 156 possible missions to be flown by the end of the year.

United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket is expected to be certified by the Space Force to fly national security missions by the end of February and its return to the launch pad could come soon after while Blue Origin plans to fly its second New Glenn mission some time this spring.

SpaceX, meanwhile, will continue its frenetic launch pace of Falcon 9 rockets from its two pads on the Space Coast.

That includes the first human spaceflights of the year with the upcoming private polar orbit mission Fram2 and the Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station in late March followed by the Axiom Space Ax-4 mission also targeted for spring.

SpaceX also has the next moonbound mission on tap for no earlier than Feb. 6 when Intuitive Machines flies its IM-2 mission trying to follow up the partial success of IM-1 last year sending another Nova-C landing named Athena to the lunar surface.

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