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SpaceX knocks out Sunday launch while targeting 2nd try for massive Starship this week

SpaceX added to the Space Coast’s growing tally of launches for the year with a Sunday night liftoff while gearing up potentially for another attempt of sending its new Starship and Super Heavy rocket up on an orbital test flight later this week.

A Falcon 9 launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 4:08 p.m., sending up a pair of satellites for Luxembourg-based SES.

Liftoff! pic.twitter.com/7xuJd88TOZ

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 12, 2023

This is the third time SpaceX has sent up a pair of SES’s O3b mPOWER satellites, which are headed for medium-Earth orbit. They are part of SES’s goal of sending up 11 such satellites to increase connectivity to remote places.

The “O3b” is in reference to the “other 3 billion” referring to the Earth’s population without access to the infrastructure found in more metropolitan areas. The mPOWER satellites are the next generation of an existing constellation of MEO satellites for SES already used by companies such as Princess Cruises.

This was the ninth flight for the first-stage booster, which landed downrange in the Atlantic on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas.

It marked the 63rd rocket launch in 2023 on the Space Coast, with SpaceX flying all but four of those. SpaceX has also flown 24 missions from California for the year, and has now had 83 successful orbital launches for the year.

In April, it attempted to fly to orbit its Starship and Super Heavy from its Boca Chica, Texas site Starbase for the first time, but problems with stage separation before reaching orbital altitude forced SpaceX to have the rocket self destruct over the Gulf of Mexico.

SpaceX still awaits final approval to fly from the Federal Aviation Administration, but its second attempt for the orbital test flight has a target to launch on Friday, according to the company’s website.

Starship preparing to launch as early as November 17, pending final regulatory approval → https://t.co/bJFjLCiTbK pic.twitter.com/qRKv9ugWsR

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 11, 2023

SpaceX will stream the test about 30 minutes before liftoff.

“As is the case with all developmental testing, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change,” the company stated.

Starship is the replacement rocket for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, and despite not making it to orbit, became the most powerful rocket to make it off the launch pad with more than 17 million pounds of thrust at liftoff during the April 20 attempt.

If it makes it orbit on this second attempt, it would surpass the record-holding power generated by NASA’s Space Launch System during its November 2022 launch on the Artemis I mission, which topped 8.8. million pounds of thrust.

“There are really a tremendous number of changes between the last Starship flight and this one, well over 1,000,” Musk said in a June interview. “I think the probability of this next flight working, you know getting to orbit, is much higher than the last one.”

Plans for this attempt still look to have Starship to climb to between 93 and 155 miles during a trip that will take it two-thirds of the way around the Earth for a hard splashdown near Hawaii.

The April attempt saw the rocket, using a combined propellant of liquid methane and liquid oxygen, make it through what’s called Max Q, the area where the craft endures maximum dynamic pressure, and it did achieve speeds up to 1,340 mph.

Had all gone well, both the booster and Starship were to have separated and each made their own hard water landings, with the booster splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico and Starship in the Pacific Ocean after its flight.

The launch system in Texas, and one that will eventually be built at Kennedy Space Center, is designed so that eventually the Super Heavy booster would return to the 469-foot-tall launch integration tower often referred to as “Mechazilla,” with a landing achieved with the aid of two pivoting metal arms called the “chopsticks.”

The Starship spacecraft would make a vertical landing at its destination as well, which would make the combination the first fully reusable rocket in the industry.

NASA has been waiting on SpaceX’s Starship as it has contracted with Musk’s company to provide a working version for its astronauts in the Artemis program to use it as their ride down to the surface of the moon.

That mission is currently slotted for the Artemis III flight, no earlier than December 2025, but that would require for SpaceX to get its Starship up and running and perform a successful uncrewed landing on the moon before NASA would let its astronauts on board.

For SpaceX, plans are to fly dozens if not more than 100 operational launches of Starship before it lets any humans on board, but it has at least three commercial human spaceflight missions already lined up in addition to the NASA mission.