With the month of June coming to a close and July on the horizon, the global launch manifest remains jam-packed. SpaceX has kicked off the week with two Falcon 9 launches from Florida, with a Starlink mission and the launch of a geostationary weather satellite. This doubleheader will be followed by a Chinese launch from Xichang and a Progress cargo flight to the International Space Station. The debut mission for Gilmour Space\u2019s Eris small launcher has been delayed out of the week.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Falcon 9 | MTG-S1<\/p>\n
SpaceX started off the week with their workhorse Falcon 9 launching the MTG-S1 mission on Tuesday, July 1, at 5:04 PM EDT (21:04 UTC) from the historic Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Teams had a two-hour and 27-minute window available for launch.<\/p>\n
Falcon 9 launched due east out of KSC, using the Earth\u2019s rotation to gain extra horizontal velocity. As the upper stage transported the payload to an initial parking orbit, the first stage \u2014 B1085-9 \u2014 returned to land on the Just Read the Instructions<\/em> droneship stationed downrange in the Atlantic. The upper stage then performed a burn to place the payload into a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) before deployment.<\/p>\n The payload for this mission was the Meteosat Third Generation-Sounder 1 (MTG-S1) weather satellite, to be operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). The spacecraft was originally slated to fly on the third flight of Ariane 6 but was remanifested to Falcon 9 due to scheduling reasons.<\/p>\n