FMN Photos by Mark Stone and Charles Boyer
UPDATE #2 : The USSF-52 launch has now been pushed to Wednesday night, the 13th. Weather forecast is not good, so stay on top of this one! Starlink still on for tonight…for now.
UPDATE: after a disappointing “Double Scrub” on the 11th, both launches have been rescheduled for same times tonight, Dec. 12th. Weather for the Falcon Heavy is 80% “go”, and 65% “go” for the Starlink mission, according to the SLD-45 Weather Squadron’s latest forecast.
Things are looking good for a potential space launch “double-header” tonight, as the Space Coast prepares for two night time launches.
The two launches are set just a few hours apart. The first, is the twice delayed USSF-52 mission on board a Falcon Heavy. The mission, set to launch at 8:14 PM from Pad 39A, will send the Department of Defense’s X-37B space plane back into orbit on it’s seventh mission. With a launch window of only eighteen minutes, pretty much everything from systems to weather will have to be perfect. The mission’s twin Falcon 9 boosters are scheduled to land at LZ-1 and LZ-2 on the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station just eight minutes after launch, promising a spectacular light and sound show for observers.
The evening’s second launch will be Space X’s Starlink mission 6-34. The Starlink mission is set to carry a batch of 23 Starlink v2 mini-satellites to orbit. The launch window is set to open at 11:05 PM, with a launch from from Pad 40. The mission has a four hour launch window, and if the history of Starlink launches is any indication, the launch will not happen until sometime well after the opening of the 11:05PM window. The Falcon 9 booster will land aboard the drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas” off of the Florida coast. This will be the 88th Falcon 9 launch of the tear for SpaceX, and the 283rd flight of a Falcon 9 booster overall.
Space Launch Delta 45’s Weather Squadron has released an updated launch forecast for both launches. The USSF-52 launch weather indicates only a 25% chance of violating launch constraints, with the concern being high level winds. By the time the Starlink launch rolls around, the probability of a scrub due to weather drops to only 15%. In the finicky world of Florida weather, this is about as good as it gets.
