Following an extremely eventful week in Spaceflight, this week was expected to be a return to \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d, with two SpaceX Starlink missions, one each from Vandenberg and Florida, and a Falcon 9 launching a customer satellite making up the launch manifest for the week. Unfortunately, the weather led to delays and cancellations, and a rare technical issue on a Falcon 9 canceled the remaining launch, resulting in a week in which there were no orbital launches.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
SpaceX is preparing Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center for the upcoming Falcon Heavy launch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2019s (NOAA) GOES-U satellite on June 25. Due to this, Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) is taking the full brunt of launches from the East Coast and, in doing so, has seen remarkable turnaround times for every launch, but weather and other factors have reduced the cadence this week.<\/p>\n
Heavy rain with lightning storms passed across Florida this week and this has caused delays, as Falcon 9\u2019s are not allowed to fly when there is potential lightning. The 45th Space Wing Weather Division issued a forecast showing a 95 percent likelihood that conditions would not be suitable for launch early in the week, and this was indeed the case. This absence of launches doesn\u2019t represent the extreme activity across the global launch market this year, and we can expect the cadence to pick up again very shortly.<\/p>\n
SpaceX Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 10-2<\/p>\n
SpaceX will continue to add Starlink v2 Mini satellites to the Starlink constellation as they launch the second batch of 22 Group 10 satellites to orbit. With bad weather forecast for during the initial launch window on June 12, liftoff was rescheduled for June 13, at 4:46 PM EDT (20:46 UTC), but this launch attempt was scrubbed part-way into propellant loading after delaying the liftoff time several times within the launch window.<\/p>\n
The next launch opportunity for this mission was announced as Friday, June 14, at 4:31 PM EDT (20:31 UTC), with a launch window that lasts until 8:19 PM EDT (Saturday, June 15, 00:19 UTC). The liftoff time was adjusted twice before counting down to 5:07 PM EDT (21:07 UTC). At this point the nine Merlin engines appeared to ignite as usual, but the Falcon 9 aborted liftoff. This is an automatic scrub for the day as the super-chilled propellants cannot be held aboard the Falcon 9 while the rocket recycles.<\/p>\n
SpaceX\u2019s Kiko Dontchev commented in an X post that the Booster needed to be inspected, so the launch is now postponed until further notice.<\/p>\n
Spaceflight news subscription (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
\n