Live coverage: SpaceX set to launch another 53 Starlink internet satellites - Spaceflight Now
Watch a replay of our live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on the Starlink 5-11 mission at 3:10 a.m. EDT (0710 UTC) on June 12 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Follow us on Twitter.
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From which launch site did the Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Starlink satellites launch?
SpaceX's 40th launch of the year will send another batch of 53 Starlink internet satellites into orbit from Cape Canaveral early Monday aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.
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What did SpaceX launch into orbit on June 12th?
Liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is scheduled for 3:10 a.m. EDT (0710 UTC) Monday, and forecasters predict good weather, with just a 10% chance weather conditions could violate any of the Falcon 9's launch criteria.
The mission will follow a familiar track and timeline, with the Falcon 9 heading southeast from Florida's Space Coast to place the 53 Starlink payloads into an orbit inclined 43 degrees to the equator. It will take about 65 minutes from liftoff through separation of the Starlink satellites, which will occur over the Western Pacific Ocean.
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How many operational Starlink satellites does SpaceX have in orbit?
The launch is the first of two Falcon 9 rockets scheduled to take off Monday, with SpaceX teams at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California preparing a Falcon 9 for liftoff about 14 hours after the flight from Florida at 5:19 p.m. EDT (2:19 p.m. PDT; 2119 UTC). The launch from California will haul a group of 72 small spacecraft and payloads into polar orbit for a range of U.S. and international customers on SpaceX's eighth small satellite rideshare mission.
The mission poised to launch from Cape Canaveral early Monday is numbered Starlink 5-11 in SpaceX's launch sequence, which will bring the total number of Starlink satellites SpaceX has launched to 4,596. The Starlink network provides high-speed, low-latency connectivity to customers around the world. SpaceX says each Starlink launch adds more than a terabit per second of capacity to the constellation.
SpaceX currently has more than 4,200 functioning Starlink satellites in space, with more than 3,500 operational spacecraft and more than 500 moving into their operational orbits, according to a tabulation by Jonathan McDowell, an expert tracker of spaceflight activity and an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The rest of the Starlink satellites were prototypes or failed platforms that have been retired from service and guided back into the atmosphere to burn up on re-entry.