SpaceX Falcon 9 Orbits Turksat 5B Satellite for Second Launch in One Day
CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE FORCE BASE, Fla. — On Saturday, December 18 at 10:58 p.m. EST, Falcon 9 launched the Turksat 5B mission to geostationary transfer orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
This was the third launch and landing of this booster, which previously supported launch of CRS-22 and Crew-3.
It was the second SpaceX launch on Saturday. At 7:41 a.m. EST, a Falcon 9 launched 52 Starlink broadband satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
It was the 11th launch and landing of a Falcon 9 first-stage booster, a new record for the company. The booster has launched Dragon’s first crew demonstration mission, the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, SXM-7, and now 8 Starlink missions.
SpaceX is scheduled to conduct its 31st and final launch of the year on Tuesday, Dec. 21 at 5:06 a.m. EST. A Falcon 9 will launch a Dragon 2 cargo ship to the International Space Station (ISS) from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. It will be the 24th mission under SpaceX’s Commercial Resupply Services contract and the Dragon capsule’s fourth flight to the station.
The forecast calls for a 40 percent chance of favorable weather for the launch.
4 responses to “SpaceX Falcon 9 Orbits Turksat 5B Satellite for Second Launch in One Day”
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Congratulations! Each Falcon 9 flight is now a new record.
nice job
Well, the self-imposed 10x flown benchmark for an individual booster is officially surpassed.
Meanwhile, there’s another 10x flown booster, two 9x flown boosters and a 5xer among others.
As they’re moving on to Starship, SpaceX will never get to a reflight of the same Falcon booster within 24 hours, but I wonder how quickly they’ll end up going. So far, the quickest reuse is, I believe, 27 days. For the coming year, SpaceX has about 40 non-Starlink launches scheduled. To also get up their own Starlink satellites, they’ll have to really pick up the launch pace, which would seem to require quicker reuse turnarounds. Hard to imagine 2 weeks, but 3 weeks (21 days) is only 6 days shorter than they’ve already done…
And don’t forget all of the FH flights as well. Demand is finally catching up to supply. Going to be busy.