SpaceX broke another re-flight record on Friday night with the send off of 23 more Starlink satellites on a Bird of prey 9 promoter making its eighteenth flight.
The Starlink 6-26 mission sent off from Space Send off Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Power Station at 8:37 p.m. EDT (0037 UTC on Nov. 4). It sent 23 Starlink V2 Smaller than usual satellites up to low Earth circle, which will bring the absolute Starlink satellites sent off in 2023 up to 1,711.
The supporter for this mission, tail number B1058, is the most established, at present flying Hawk 9 promoter. It previously flew on May 30, 2020, sending off previous NASA space travelers Bounce Behnken and Doug Hurley to the Worldwide Space Station on the Demo-2 mission. This was the main trip of the Business Group Program with space travelers ready. SpaceX has since flown seven team revolution missions up to the circling station, notwithstanding two confidential space explorer missions.
Following takeoff, the supporter arrived on the droneship, ‘A Setback of Gravitas,’ around eight-and-a-half minutes into the mission.
As SpaceX keeps pursuing adding Winged serpent capacities to SLC-40 with another group access tower, Friday night’s main goal will denoted the 152nd orbital send off for the organization since it started utilizing the platform. This will be the 207th generally send off from this site.
While SpaceX sent off its 52nd Starlink send off of the year, it’s additionally pursuing one more mission over at Send off Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. On Thursday, NASA reported an additional two-day slip to the send off. It’s the third time the mission has been postponed because of an issue with one of the Draco engines on the Freight Winged serpent that will fly the mission. Send off was recently booked for Nov. 3, 5 and 7.
“During the initial propellant load in preparation for the CRS-29 mission, teams identified a leak of NTO (nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer) in a Draco thruster valve, which per standard procedure required a pause to the operation to troubleshoot,” NASA said in a statement. “The team inspected the valve and respective data, and decided to replace the thruster.”
The 29th SpaceX mission for the Business Resupply Administrations program is as of now focusing on send off at 8:28 p.m. EST on Nov. 9 (0128 UTC on Nov. 10).