https://www.space.com/spacex-starlin...h-webcast.html
SpaceX to launch next 60 Starlink internet satellites Sunday.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The private spaceflight company
SpaceX will launch 60 new
Starlink satellites to join its ever-growing broadband internet megaconstellation Sunday (March 15) and you can watch it live online.
A SpaceX
Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Starlink mission from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Liftoff is scheduled for no earlier than 9:22 a.m. EST (1322 GMT). You can
watch SpaceX's Starlink launch webcast here and on the Space.com homepage, courtesy of SpaceX, beginning about 15 minutes before liftoff. You'll also be able to
watch the launch directly from SpaceX here.
This is SpaceX's sixth launch of the year and the sixth Starlink launch to date. The mission will star a veteran Falcon 9 rocket that will do what no other Falcon has done before: launch and land five times. The booster, dubbed B1048.5, previously launched a bevy of satellites including part of the Iridium NEXT constellations, an
Israeli lunar lander a communications satellites for Argentina and Indonesia,
and a previous Starlink mission.
This is a major milestone for SpaceX. The upgraded version of their workhorse was introduced in 2018,
launching the first communications satellite for Bangladesh. Company founder and CEO, Elon Musk said that the souped up booster would be able to fly ten times with little refurbishment in between. Sunday's flight marks the first time a Falcon has reached the halfway point.
To date, four Falcons have four successful flights under their belts, but today’s booster will be the first to launch five times. However, of those four, two were not recovered and will not fly again. One was intentionally destroyed during the company’s
in-flight abort test and the booster used in the latest
Starlink mission before this one, was lost after narrowly missing the drone ship.......
Approximately eight minutes after launch, the Falcon’s first stage will return to Earth. It’s scheduled to touch down on the deck of SpaceX’s drone ship,
Of Course I Still Love You, stationed out in the Atlantic Ocean.
The company has also deployed its two fairing-catching ships:
GO Ms. Tree and
GO Ms. Chief in hopes of snagging the
payload fairings as they fall back to Earth. The fairing used in today’s launch attempt was previously used on the first Starlink mission. (It was refurbished after gently splashing down in the ocean.)
SpaceX aims to catch and refurbish fairings to cut down on costs and reuse more of its launch hardware. Currently the company has successfully recovered 50 first stage boosters and
GO Ms. Tree has made three successful fairing catches. With any luck, the company will see its first double catch Sunday.....