SATELLITE BEACH — SpaceX slid in a liftoff just before midnight Sunday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station with the help of a record-setting rocket booster that had previously flown 15 times.
The Falcon 9 carrying 22 of the company’s Starlink internet satellites launched at 11:58 p.m. from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 after skipping through several earlier opportunities because of rough weather on the Space Coast. The skies cleared enough, though, to let the night sky glow as the rocket streaked along a southern trajectory over the Atlantic with a muffled rumble that shook houses miles south of the launch site.
Liftoff! pic.twitter.com/R1w03m4N6o
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 10, 2023
The first-stage booster is the first for the company to make its 16th liftoff, once again managing a return landing downrange on SpaceX’s droneship Just Read the Instructions.
It previously sent up the first humans to space as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program riding in the Crew Dragon Endeavour on the test flight Crew Demo-2 in May 2020. It has since flown the ANASIS-II, CRS-21, Transporter-1, Transporter-3, and 10 Starlink missions.
It was the company’s 206th booster recovery from its Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rockets since the first successful recovery in December 2015.
Falcon 9’s first stage has landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship, completing the first 16th launch and landing of a booster pic.twitter.com/bT70Zu2aKl
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 10, 2023
The launch marks SpaceX’s 46th orbital mission for 2023 from all three of its regular launch complexes: Canaveral, Kennedy Space Center and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It also has flown its in-development Starship and Super Heavy once from its Boca Chica, Texas facility Starbase, but did not make it to orbit.
For just the Space Coast, it marks the 34th launch of the year with all but two coming from SpaceX.
The company has a big slate of Starlink and other Falcon 9 launches through the end of the year, but has two marquee missions coming up from KSC in the next month with its next powerhouse Falcon Heavy launch targeting late July and its next crewed launch, the Crew-7 mission for NASA to the International Space Station, no earlier than Aug. 15.
![By MEAD GRUVER (Associated Press) The human species has topped 8 billion, with longer lifespans offsetting fewer births, but world population growth continues a long-term trend of slowing down, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday. The bureau estimates the global population exceeded the threshold Sept. 26, a precise date the agency said to take with […]](https://www.orlandosentinel.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/India_Festival_49284.jpg?w=525 "By MEAD GRUVER (Associated Press) The human species has topped 8 billion, with longer lifespans offsetting fewer births, but world population growth continues a long-term trend of slowing down, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday. The bureau estimates the global population exceeded the threshold Sept. 26, a precise date the agency said to take with […]")
