Live coverage: SpaceX reschedules Starlink delivery mission for midnight hour Tuesday

editorSpaceflight NowSpacex3 days ago9 Views

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket for the Starlink 12-19 mission seen on the pad at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station awaiting launch. Image: Spaceflight Now

SpaceX will make another attempt Tuesday to launch its latest batch of Starlink satellites following a scrub in the pre-dawn hours of Monday.

Liftoff of the Starlink 12-19 mission from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is currently targeted for 12:43 a.m. EDT (0443 UTC) on Tuesday, June 3.

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about an hour prior to liftoff.

As of 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 UTC) on Monday, the 45th Weather Squadron hadn’t published a new launch weather forecast for this next launch opportunity. In its outlook from Sunday, meteorologists said SpaceX would be facing a 65 percent chance for favorable weather.

The possibility for lingering effects from thunderstorms is at play as well impacts from a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that erupted from the Sun on Friday and continues to impact Earth’s magnetic field.

The phenomenon, known as a geomagnetic storm, is continuously being tracked and evaluated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) based in Boulder, Colorado.

As of its most recent update shortly before 8 a.m. EDT (1200 UTC), the storm was rated as ‘G3 Strong’ on the SWPC’s scale, which maxes out at G5. The agency warned of some potential effects to electronics on Earth and satellites in orbit, stating that the current impact is a “possible, slight risk of various satellite operations’ effects.”

However, the weather on Earth or in space didn’t appear to be the cause of the launch scrub in the overnight hours from Sunday into Monday. Had SpaceX been able to launch its Falcon 9 rocket, it would’ve been the second fastest turnaround time for SLC-40 to date and chances are, the launch teams just didn’t have everything in order in time to make that slot.

SpaceX will use its Falcon 9 first stage booster 1071 to launch this mission, which will be making its 21st flight. It previously launched missions like NASA’s Crew-5, GPS III Space Vehicle 06 and a Cygnus spacecraft on the NG-20 mission for Northrop Grumman.

A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, SpaceX will aim to land B1071 on the droneship, ‘Just Read the Instructions,’ positioned in the Atlantic Ocean. If successful, this will be the 123rd landing for this vessel and the 456th booster landing to date.

Onboard the first Falcon 9 launch of June are 23 Starlink satellites, which include 13 that have direct-to-cell capabilities. To date, SpaceX has launched 635 of these DTC capable Starlink satellites.

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