SpaceX Conducts Second Launch in Less Than 24 Hours, Third Scheduled for Sunday Morning
SpaceX conducted its second launch in less than 24 hours on Saturday morning when a Falcon 9 carried a German reconnaissance satellite into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The rocket lifted off at 7:19 a.m. PDT (10:19 a.m. EDT) with the Airbus-built SARah synthetic aperture radar satellite for the German military from a fog-shrouded launch pad. SpaceX ended its webcast early prior to satellite deployment at the request of the customer.
The Falcon 9’s first stage booster, launching for the third time, touched down at Landing Zone 4 at Vandenberg. It was SpaceX’s 125th recovery of an orbital class booster.
It was the second Falcon 9 flight in just over 22 hours. On Friday, SpaceX launched 53 Starlink broadband satellites from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rocket lifted off at 12:08 p.m. EDT (9:08 a.m. PDT).
It was a record 13th flight for the Falcon 9 first stage booster, which previously launched GPS III-3, Turksat 5A, Transporter-2, and now 10 Starlink missions. The stage landed on the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship in the Atlantic Ocean.
SpaceX will wrap up a busy weekend on Sunday morning with a Falcon 9 launch of the Globalstar FM15 communications satellite at 12:27 a.m. EDT (04:27 UTC) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It will be the 26th launch of the year for SpaceX.
You can watch the live launch webcast for the launch starting about 10 minutes before liftoff.
12 responses to “SpaceX Conducts Second Launch in Less Than 24 Hours, Third Scheduled for Sunday Morning”
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Congratulations! Nice to see that they are breaking in some new boosters.
There were no new boosters used for any of the three launches this weekend. The first of the launches set a new record of 13 flights for the first time. The soot coating now almost matches the carbon fiber interstage on that puppy. The other two boosters were making their third and ninth flights, respectively. In another week, SpaceX will be flying a booster on a 13th mission for the second time. We’ll see some new boosters fly on upcoming FH missions but I don’t know if any virgin F9 boosters are slated to fly during the remainder of this year.
I think the cores of the FH may be new, but it’s an advantage they are able to switch and out the side boosters as needed. If I recall one of the FH flights for USSF will expend both the core and side boosters since it needs the maximum performance of the FH.
Perhaps it’s a different mission, but I recall reading that the mission will land the two side boosters downrange on the landing platforms and expend the central core. I don’t recall reading of any Falcon Heavy mission intended to expend all 3 cores.
Perhaps that is it. It will be interesting to see.
Really getting into the stride here. Even the Soviet army didn’t launch quite at that rate in late 70ies-early 80ies
Yes, their third launch was also successful, three successful launches in a little over 36 hours is a good rate. They are also keeping up their pace of a launch a week so far even with the delay of the Dragon Cargo flight.
Falcon is just barely under half of the YTD worldwide total launches. Suspect over half on tonnage.
There are still two more F9 launches scheduled during what’s left of June. If those both launch on time, SpaceX will be at 28 launches for 1H 2022, an annualized rate of 56 – significantly better than one per week. There are also six launches scheduled for July. If all of those fly as planned, SpaceX’s annualized launch rate will jump up above 58. In January, SpaceX’s inital goal for the year was 52 launches – exactly one per week, on average. Elon later bumped that goal up to 60. It’s now looking as though there’s an excellent probability Elon was uncharacteristically not aspirational enough in setting that new goal.
Yes, having Starlink satellites to launch really enables SpaceX to be able to keep the pace up as they appear to have reached market saturation in terms of outside flights. I also expect the delay in flying the Starlink 2 satellites means they are putting up more Starlink 1 satellites to meet the demand for it’s services.
Supposedly SpaceX is going to attempted Starlink v2 deployment with the inaugural flight to Kauai. Just to to see if the dual Pez dispensers works as expected. Maybe with inert Starlink v2 buses without any functional comsat components.
Don’t forget the 5 Starship orbital launches with the Super Heavies allow by the FAA.