After a couple of short delays, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 last night from Cape Canaveral, Florida, lofting Starlink 6-8 — twenty-two second-generation Starlink satellites to orbit. The launch was picture-perfect, with the rocket clearly visible for several minutes after liftoff and even well past staging. Thunderstorms well off to the north and east-southeast added to the light show, with dozens of lightning strokes clearly visible but far away enough not to violate any range safety rules.
With this mission, Falcon 9 Booster 1078 completed its fourth flight successfully and landed on the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas, which had been prepositioned on the Atlantic Ocean north of the Bahamas. Previously, B-1078 carried Crew-6, SES O3b mPower, and Starlink 4-4. After returning from sea, the booster will presumably be refurbished in SpaceX’s “Hangar X” facility at the Cape and re-used for a future mission.
The flight also set a new record for a launch pad “turnaround” at SLC-40, with a new low time of eighty-one hours and some forty-one minutes between launches. The pad is scheduled for another launch this week, Starlink 6-9, on Thursday at around 7:23 pm Eastern Daylight Time. If that launch proceeds as planned, the turnaround time would again be shortened, this time to seventy-five hours and eighteen minutes.
Then, on Sunday, August 13th, SpaceX has Starlink 6-10 on the schedule, but no set launch time has been announced.
Following those two launches, there will be an apparent break in the heavy cadence of Starlink launches as SpaceX will be turning their attention to preparation for and execution of Crew-7, whose launch is slated for Friday, August 25th at 3:49 AM EDT.
