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SpaceX nails overnight launch while prepping for 2nd crewed mission next week

SpaceX performed another overnight launch from Cape Canaveral early Sunday as preparations continue for the crewed Axiom Space flight from Kennedy Space Center one week later.

A Falcon 9 with 56 of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites lifted off from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 1:03 a.m. in a near repeat of a mission that launched in the wee hours of the morning on May 4.

Liftoff! pic.twitter.com/zRIs6LGeMM

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 14, 2023

The first-stage booster made its 11th flight and SpaceX was able to recover it again on the droneship Just Read the Instructions stationed down range in the Atlantic Ocean.

It was the 23rd launch from the Space Coast in 2023 with all but one by Elon Musk’s company.

So far only the Crew-6 flight in March has carried humans to space for SpaceX, but the second human spaceflight is targeting next Sunday, May 21, from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A at 5:37 p.m.

That mission, dubbed Ax-2, is the second ever for Axiom Space, which looks to bring its crew of four to the International Space Station for eight days onboard, part of NASA’s allowance for commercial companies to visit the station. Ax-1 spent two weeks on board in 2022.

Once again, one of the four crew is a former NASA astronaut, but now an Axiom Space Peggy Whitson, Axiom’s Director of Human Spaceflight, will act as commander. In the role of pilot is aviator John Shoffner while the remaining crew in the role of mission specialists, are two astronauts with the Saudi Space Commission — Rayyanah Barnawi and Ali AlQarni.

The quartet will be riding in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Freedom making only its second spaceflight following 2022’s Crew-4 mission that spent April-October attached to the ISS.

They will increase the ISS population from seven to 11 and become the second Crew Dragon docked to the station with Crew-6’s Dragon in the midst of its six-month stay.

While only the second Crew Dragon flight of 2023, SpaceX has as many as three more that could fly before the end of the year including the Polaris Dawn mission, and orbital flight that will be the second to space for billionaire Jared Issacman targeting this summer; the planned August flight of the next rotational mission to the ISS, Crew-7; and a possible third Axiom Space mission.

SpaceX has been flying humans to the ISS as well as one orbital flight on its Crew Dragons since May 2020, having already taken up 34 passengers to space. Crew Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner were the two spacecraft that NASA contracted for rotational crew missions to the ISS, but Starliner has yet to complete its first crewed test flight, although that is slated for July.