SpaceX is gearing up for today’s second Falcon 9 mission. It will launch 22 second-generation Starlink satellites into orbit early Saturday at 9:05 p.m. EDT (0105 UTC) after a successful four-member crew launch to the International Space Station.
After a successful mission, more than 5,000 Starlink satellites will reach orbit on Saturday. So far, SpaceX has launched a total of 4,983 Starlinks, according to statistics compiled by Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who maintains a spaceflight database.
After liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40, Falcon 9 will climb southeast and aim for an orbit tilted 43 degrees to the equator. After separating from the second stage after about two and a half minutes of flight, the first stage booster will land on the Just Read the Instructions drone ship, which will be deployed in the Atlantic Ocean east of the Bahamas.
Falcon 9 is ready for launch at Cape Canaveral on the Starlink 6-11 mission. Image: Spaceflight Now. Two second stage burns are required to put the satellites into the required circular orbit. The 22 satellites will be separated about an hour, five minutes after launch.
The first stage booster, tail number B1080, is on its third mission. Its first flight was to launch a private Axiom 2 crew to the International Space Station earlier this year on May 21. Most recently, it rose on July 1. by the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope.
This will be the 14th launch of the so-called V2 mini-satellites, which are larger and offer four times the bandwidth of previous models. The full-sized V2 Starlink satellites were supposed to be launched by SpaceX’s reusable Starship vehicle, but the delayed Starship debut prompted SpaceX to create a shortened version of the satellites to be launched on the Falcon 9.
In early May, SpaceX announced that it had more than 1.5 million Starlink subscribers. The company’s Internet service is available in more than 60 countries.
