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Falcon 9’s first-stage booster for Starlink launch has impressive history

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CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE FORCE STATION — At the moment, Mother Nature is giving SpaceX a pretty nice forecast for its Starlink launch on Tuesday evening.

And that is good news for the Falcon 9’s first-stage booster, which has a very impressive launch resume.


What You Need To Know

  • The Starlink 6-94 mission will take off from Space Launch Complex 40
  • This Falcon 9’s first-stage booster has an impressive history

SpaceX stated it will send up its Falcon 9 rocket with the Starlink 6-94 mission from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:12 p.m. ET. 

The launch window will open from 6:29 p.m. ET to 10:29 p.m. ET, meaning the California-based company has during this time slot to send up its Falcon 9 rocket.

The 45th Weather Squadron gave a 95% chance of good liftoff conditions, with the only concerns being the cumulus cloud rule.

Find out more about the weather criteria for a Falcon 9 launch.

A solid dozen?

If all goes well, this will be the 12th mission for the Falcon 9’s first-stage booster called B1085.  

It has an impressive resume, from first launching the Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station, to sending up two commercial companies’ lunar landers — with Firefly Aerospace being the first company to successfully land on the moon — to taking up four people in the civilian Fram2 mission to explore Earth’s polar regions.

  1. Crew-9 mission
  2. Starlink 6-77 mission
  3. Starlink 10-5 mission
  4. RRT-1
  5. Blue Ghost and HAKUTO-R
  6. Fram2 mission
  7. Starlink 6-93 mission
  8. SXM-10 mission
  9. Eumetsat MTG-S1 mission
  10. Starlink 10-20 mission
  11. Starlink 10-27 mission

After the stage separation, the first-stage rocket should land on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas, which will be in the Atlantic Ocean.

About the mission

The 29 satellites will head to low-Earth orbit to join the thousands already there once deployed.

SpaceX owns the Starlink company, where the satellites provide internet service to many areas of the round Earth.

Dr. Jonathan McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has been recording Starlink satellites.

Before this launch, McDowell documented the following:

  • 8,994 are in orbit
  • 7,716 are in operational orbit

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Anthony Leone

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