SpaceX will launch a batch of 60 Starlink satellites from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday (January 19) to expand the company's growing megaconstellation and will dispatch a Falcon 9 rocket as part of its 17th Starlink mission. It will be the first Starlink launch for the year and second launch for Elon Musk's spaceflight company in 2021.
This will be the 17th time that SpaceX has sent Starlink satellites into space. As part of this mission, over 60 Starlink internet satellites will be pushed into the Earth’s orbit, and join 1,000 other satellites. The goal of this mission is provide global space-based broadband coverage from up to 42,000 satellites.
The 17th Starlink mission will take off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39A on Tuesday at 8.23 AM local time. Earlier, it was scheduled to take off on Monday at 8.45 AM local time.
It has been rescheduled for Tuesday at 8:23 a.m. EST, SpaceX tweeted.
The Falcon 9 booster used in this mission will be B1051, which has previously flown a record seven times. It will aim to go one better and then land on the drone ship Just Read The Instructions stationed in the Atlantic Ocean about 10 minutes after lift-off. If successful, it will mark the fastest turnaround for a Falcon 9 between flights.
SpaceX, marked the new year by launching first Falcon 9 rocket to a new communications satellite to space for Turkey on January 7. Turksat 5A is the first of a pair of next-generation broadcasting birds that SpaceX boosted to orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida when the weather was forecasted to be 70 per cent favourable. Turksat says the new satellite will be able to provide expanded communications capabilities to Turkey, as well as parts of Asia, Europa and Africa.
