Starlink satellites – SpaceX headed into the weekend with a pair of launches planned for Florida’s Space Coast with both supporting the company’s Starlink broadband satellite internet constellation.
First up to bat was Starlink 6-89, which flew from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Liftoff happened at 10:08 p.m. EST (0308 UTC) with the rocket flying on a south-easterly trajectory.
With both this and the second mission, Starlink 6-85, scheduled to launch within the same four-hour window of opportunity, the 45th Weather Squadron issued identical forecasts for both missions, citing a greater than 95 percent chance for favorable weather at liftoff. After a few days of notable solar activity, launch weather officers dropped the potential for solar impacts down to a moderate risk on a low-moderate-high scale.
The Starlink 6-89 mission used the Falcon 9 booster with the tail number B1092, which flew for an eighth time. Its previous missions include CRS-32, GPS III SV08 and NROL-69.
About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1092 performed a landing on the drone ship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’, positioned out in the Atlantic Ocean to the east of The Bahamas. This was the 132nd landing on this vessel and the 533rd booster landing to date for SpaceX.
