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SpaceX prioritizes Falcon Heavy launch, stands down from Starlink mission on Space Coast

SpaceX handed over the Space Coast spotlight for a short time last week with United Launch Alliance managing an Atlas V liftoff for Amazon, but Elon Musk’s company was trying to get back to the business of sticking more of its Starlink satellites into orbit, but have stood down to make way for a Falcon Heavy launch later this week.

After upper level winds forced teams to stand down Sunday night, teams were aiming for a Monday night launch of a Falcon 9 rocket with 22 more of its second-generation of internet satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40.

But SpaceX posted to social media that it was going to wait on the Canaveral launch to make sure an upcoming launch for NASA at nearby Kennedy Space Center on its powerhouse Falcon Heavy was good to go.

Long wait nearly over for Psyche asteroid probe’s Space Coast launch

The fourth Falcon Heavy launch of the year is launching a probe named Psyche on a multiyear trip to a metal-rich asteroid of the same name between Mars and Jupiter targeting a Thursday liftoff at 10:16 a.m.

Now that mission will likely be the 55th launch by all companies from the Space Coast in 2023 with all but four coming from SpaceX. ULA has managed three including the Amazon launch on Friday while startup Relativity Space launches its 3D-printed Terran 1 rocket back in March.

The majority of SpaceX launches, though, have been Falcon 9’s, mostly for Starlink and mostly from Cape Canaveral.

Liftoff! pic.twitter.com/dhvM12Z1nQ

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 9, 2023

SpaceX did manage one launch early Monday, but from the west coast. Another Falcon 9 already took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base’s Space Launch Complex 4 East in California at 3:43 a.m. adding another 21 satellites to the constellation that now has had more than 5,200 launched since the first operational units went up in 2019.

The new versions are called v2 mini, which are larger than the original Starlinks. Earlier launches would put around 60 of them into orbit per launch, but Falcon 9 rockets can only fit about 22 per launch.

SpaceX had planned to develop a much larger Starlink satellite and use its in-development Starship to get them to orbit, but delays in getting Starship into space has meant a shift in plans to grow the company’s constellation and its business of providing global internet, which Musk last week confirmed was approaching 2 million customers.

Atlas V launches from Cape Canaveral with prototype Amazon satellites

It’s still by far the biggest in orbit, but the Atlas V launch for Amazon put up that company’s first two prototype satellites for what would be a competing internet constellation called Project Kuiper.

Amazon’s plans are to get more than 3,200 of those satellites into orbit by summer 2029 while SpaceX still has a license from the Federal Communications Commission to have as many as 7,500 up, according to astronomer Jonathan McDowell.

He said several other companies and nations have plans that could see the total number of low-Earth orbit satellites expand to between 10,000 and 20,000 before the end of the decade, and grow to near 100,000 by 2040.