Photo: Charles Boyer / FMN
With Crew-8’s Falcon 9 sitting on Pad LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center this morning waiting for weather to improve along its launch corridor, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 carrying 23 more Starlink Version 2 Mini satellites to low-Earth orbit from its other launch pad on the Eastern Range at SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Liftoff at 10:30 AM EST under almost-overcast skies, with the rocket completely disappearing 10-15 seconds after liftoff when it entered the cloud deck and rose towards orbit. About 8.5 minutes later, Booster B1076 completed its 11th mission and landed safely offshore on the company’s autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) Just Read The Instructions.
JRTI will now head back to Port Canaveral and should arrive several days from now to offload the booster so it can be inspected and refurbished for another flight.
Today’s launch was the 13th of the year so far as February comes to a close. That’s a launch rate of one every 4.6-odd days on the average. The launch was also a new record for pad turnaround time, at three days, seventeen hours and twenty-four minutes — the Starlink 6-39 mission launched from SLC-40 at 5:06 PM last Sunday.
Next Launch
SpaceX and NASA hope to launch Crew-8 from pad LC-39A on Saturday, March 2nd from Pad LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center. This launch was rescheduled from 12:04 AM EST March 1st, due to weather concerns along its flight path as it heads towards the International Space Station.
