Space Coast weather looks to be amenable to lighting some candles this week with a Wednesday morning launch from SpaceX and a Thursday evening liftoff from Boeing.
First up is another Starlink mission from SpaceX launching from Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39-A.
The Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45 weather squadron released its forecast for the 6:20 a.m. liftoff predicting an 80% chance for favorable conditions. A delay to Thursday morning sees even better weather with 90% chance of not violating launch conditions.
If it flies, it would be the 21st rocket launch from Elon Musk’s company this year from among its two Florida and one California pads. Starlink missions look to continue the company’s placement of its internet satellites into low-Earth orbit.
The launch would follow successful Starlink mission liftoffs on Friday and Saturday from Vandenburg Space Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, respectively.
This batch would push the total launched to more than 2,600 since 2019, although only 2,321 are operational, according to statistics tracked by astronomer Jonathan McDowell.
The company has approval to place 4,408 Starlinks into service, each of which orbit at about 341 miles altitude.
The growing constellation now provides internet to parts of 32 countries around the world as part of the company’s plan to raise funds for its eventual Mars colonization efforts.
On Thursday evening, Boeing and NASA look to send up the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V from Cape Canaveral SFS’s Space Launch Complex-41.
SLD 45’s weather squadron predicts a 70% chance for favorable conditions for the instantaneous launch window of 6:54 p.m. A delay to Friday, though, doesn’t bode well with only a 40% chance of favorable weather.
That flight for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is a redo of a Starliner mission from December 2019 during which the spacecraft failed to dock with the International Space Station.
More than 80 issues were addressed after that flight, but a new valve issue stymied the original re-attempt last August, leading to another eight-month delay.
Boeing is looking to play catchup with NASA’s other Commercial Crew provider SpaceX with its Crew Dragon. The goal is for Starliner to dock and return to Earth, paving the way for a crewed test flight later this year and operational missions in 2023.
![By SETH BORENSTEIN (AP Science Writer) Ocean temperatures that have gone “crazy haywire” hot, especially in the Atlantic, are close to making the current global coral bleaching event the worst in history. It’s so bad that scientists are hoping for a few hurricanes to cool things off. More than three-fifths — 62.9% — of the […]](https://www.orlandosentinel.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Climate_Coral_Bleaching_Record_81714.jpg?w=525 "By SETH BORENSTEIN (AP Science Writer) Ocean temperatures that have gone “crazy haywire” hot, especially in the Atlantic, are close to making the current global coral bleaching event the worst in history. It’s so bad that scientists are hoping for a few hurricanes to cool things off. More than three-fifths — 62.9% — of the […]")
