Title: SpaceX targeting late Monday for 66th Starlink mission from Cape Canaveral
A quick look at which rockets lift off from various Brevard launch sites.
SpaceX is targeting Monday for the latest launch window in a series of late-night rocket liftoffs to expand its ever-growing Starlink high-speed internet satellite constellation.
Though SpaceX has yet to confirm the existence of the Starlink 6-30 mission, various navigational warnings indicate its 4½-hour launch window will open at 11 p.m. EST Monday and continue beyond midnight to 3:31 a.m. Tuesday.
Additional details:
About: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Location: Launch Complex 40.
Trajectory: Southeast.
Local sonic boom: No.
Booster landing: Drone ship out on the Atlantic Ocean.
A similar SpaceX Starlink window produced a 2:47 a.m. EST launch on Wednesday. That night-owl mission marked the 65th orbital launch of the year thus far from the Space Coast, extending 2023’s ongoing annual record.
The day before that liftoff occurred, SpaceX announced that its Starlink high-speed internet network is now available across Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific Ocean.
“Since the original license to operate the Starlink Generation 1 network was granted in March 2018, SpaceX has rapidly deployed satellites to bring internet to the hardest to reach places in the United States and abroad,” the company announced in February.
As of Saturday, SpaceX has launched 5,445 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit since May 2019, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Of that sum, 5,041 remain functioning in orbit, according to McDowell’s records.
Monday night, National Weather Service meteorologists expect a cold front to send the temperature tumbling around 57 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, with mostly cloudy skies and north-northwest wind of 10 to 15 mph.
Tuesday’s high temperature is only forecast to hit 68 degrees at the military installation.
For the latest schedule updates at the Cape, visit floridatoday.com/launchschedule.
Rick Neale is a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY (for more of his stories, click here.) Contact Neale at 321-242-3638 or rneale@floridatoday.com. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1
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