Updated: California launch slips.
SpaceX is planning a Starlink delivery mission from Cape Canaveral Tuesday night, the primary of two planned Falcon 9 launches in lower than 48 hours. Liftoff from pad 40 is scheduled for 11:01 p.m. EST (0401 UTC).
Near-perfect weather is forecast for the launch of 23 more satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink web service. U.S. Space Force meteorologists on the forty fifth Weather squadron said Monday there was a greater than 95-percent likelihood of acceptable weather for launch.
It’s going to be the primary launch from Space Launch Complex 40 since SpaceX attached a crew access arm to a recently-constructed tower because it upgrades the ability to handle crew and cargo Dragon flights.
Because the Starlink mission gets able to fly, at NASA’s neighboring Kennedy Space Center, SpaceX can be poised to roll out one other Falcon 9 with a Cargo Dragon for an area station resupply mission, scheduled for liftoff on Thursday at 8:28 p.m. EST (0128 UTC).
On the opposite side of the country at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, one other Falcon 9 was being prepared for a Thursday launch of the Transporter 9 mission nevertheless it has now slipped two days to Nov. 11. It’s going to carry a mess of small satellites on a ride-share mission.
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The Falcon 9 booster for Tuesday’s Starlink 6-27 mission, tail number B1073, is making its eleventh flight. It entered service in May 2022 carrying a batch of 53 V1.5 Starlink satellites. Along with making five more Starlink deliveries, it launched the SES-22 satellite, ispace’s HAKUTO-R lunar lander and the Hispasat Amazonas Nexus satellite. It also helped deliver supplies to the International Space Station on the CRS-27 Cargo Dragon flight.
After lifting off from Florida’s Space Coast, the Falcon 9 will head south-easterly targeting an orbit inclined 43 degrees to the Equator. After burning its nine Merlin 1D engines for nearly two and a half minutes, the primary stage will separate from the second stage and proceed downrange to land on the drone ship ‘Just Read the Instructions’ within the Atlantic Ocean, about 424 miles (682 km) from the launch site.
The rocket’s payload fairing halves will splashdown on parachutes slightly further downrange from the drone ship and be scooped up by the support ship ‘Bob’, named after Crew Dragon Demo-2 astronaut Bob Behnken. SpaceX recently released a photograph of a payload fairing half, which had made 13 flights, being recovered from the Ocean following the last Starlink launch.
![](https://spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/20231107-Fairing-Recovery.jpg)
Meanwhile, high above, the one vacuum Merlin engine of the second stage will fire for about six-minutes to achieve a parking orbit. After coasting for about 45 minutes, the second-stage engine will re-ignite for a three-second burn to refine the orbit. Deployment of the 23 V2 Mini Starlink satellites will follow at about one hour and five minutes after launch. SpaceX says it has greater than two million subscribers worldwide for its Starlink web service.
It’s going to be SpaceX’s eightieth orbital launch of the 12 months and the 270th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket thus far.
Spaceflight Now’s live coverage of the launch will get underway about an hour before liftoff. You can too watch 24-7 views of launch pads on the Cape in our Launch Pad Live stream.