SpaceX Falcon 9 Starlink Launch Rescheduled for Tuesday Morning
UPDATE: The launch has been postponed until after the Crew Dragon Demo-2 launch scheduled for May 27.
SpaceX’s launch of a Falcon 9 booster with 60 satellites aboard that was originally scheduled for today (Sunday) has been postponed until Tuesday, May 19 at 3:10 a.m. EDT if the weather permits it.
United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V launch of the U.S. Space Force’s X-37B vehicle was scrubbed on Saturday due to inclement weather. The booster successfully launched the space plane on Sunday morning from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
SpaceX had rescheduled the launch for Monday. However, the flight slipped a day due to a tropic depression developing off the southeast coast, the company said.
“SpaceX teams will continue monitoring launch and landing weather conditions,” the company tweeted.
Starlink is a constellation designed to provide high-speed broadband services around the world.
4 responses to “SpaceX Falcon 9 Starlink Launch Rescheduled for Tuesday Morning”
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Falcon is a great vehicle, but it never lived up to the promise of fast turn around and a scheduled cadence of launches. It was a huge advance from what we had before. But it seems to be done from the point of view of delivering commercial cadences and schedule. Wish I had a inside view as to how the technology pushes really went and what’s been settled on. Falcon has become what STS was promised . Something that can fly every two weeks with acceptable delays. But there will be delay. It never quite delivers the number of launches year to year. Even with Space X being launch provider and customer. Falcon was a huge leap forward. But it seems the market is not demanding more, and Space X seems to have become satisfied with it as is.
SpaceX is obviously not content to rest on Falcon 9’s laurels. If it was, it wouldn’t be pursuing SH-Starship so aggressively. But the old girl’s got some mileage left in her yet.
SpaceX still seems to intend another Starlink launch by month’s end, presumably just after DM-2 flies. June should be an interesting month as there are perhaps three military missions that might fly then, one for Argentina, one for Korea and one for the U.S., in addition to one or two Starlink missions.
Covid-19 travel restrictions have already delayed the Argentinian bird. Perhaps that will continue into June. And the Korean bird might be iffy for the same reason. It’s been an atypical year to say the least. But Falcon 9 – and Heavy for that matter – still have a shot at turning in quite a few more launch ops this year than last.
The Argentine payload is already late by …. geezh, I think over a year now. Clearly not the fault of the booster. The delays now are like the STS in the 90’s when the flight rate was high. Slips of a week or more resulting in less flights per year than intended.
I would argue Space X is resting on their F9 laurels. And they can. The market is not demanding anything more than what they already offer. In fact the market is buying less than what the Falcon program offers. BF(x)/Starship has nothing to do with market demand. Elon is the only real customer for that as of now.
Delayed until after DM-2. Range reset. SN-4 static fire on new engine delayed also.