Update 4:04 am EDT: SpaceX has launched the mission and landed its first stage booster on its drone, “Read the Instructions.”
After shuffling the launch schedule a bit, SpaceX began consecutive launches from both coasts in just over an hour. The company first launched the Starlink 8-10 mission from the Cape Canaveral Space Station, before launching another flight of Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base.
The launch will add another 21 Starlink satellites to SpaceX’s growing megaconstellation in low Earth orbit. Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) occurred at 3:43 a.m. EDT (0743 UTC), the end of Saturday’s launch window.
The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, tail number B1069 in the SpaceX fleet, launched for an 18th time. It previously launched SpaceX’s 24th Cargo Resupply Services (CRS-24) mission to the International Space Station, Eutelsat’s HOTBIRD-F1 satellite and 13 previous Starlink missions.
About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1069 landed on SpaceX’s drone, “Read the Instructions.” This was the 90th landing for JRTI and SpaceX’s 342nd drone landing to date.
By moving to Saturday morning launch times, it moved this launch into position to be SpaceX’s return-to-flight mission. This follows a short period during which the Falcon fleet was grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for a failed booster landing attempt on Wednesday morning.
Back to flight (again)
While SpaceX was temporarily grounded from the launch of its Falcon 9 rockets, this time was dramatically shorter than the hiatus caused by an upper stage anomaly in July, which lasted about two weeks. SpaceX was grounded for a couple of days after one of its boosters, B1062, failed to land safely on Starlink flight 8-6 on Wednesday.
The landing failure was the first such misfire since the Starlink L19 mission in February 2021.
“The SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle can return to flight operations while the overall investigation of the anomaly during the Starlink Group 8-6 mission remains open, as long as all other license requirements are met,” the FAA said said in a statement on Friday. “SpaceX filed the return-to-flight request on August 29 and the FAA granted approval on August 30.”
SpaceX wasted no time getting back to the launchpad. In the hours following the FAA’s statement, the company announced plans to launch Starlink missions 9-5 and 8-10 from VSFB and Cape Canaveral Space Force Stanton respectfully.
The first of those two was originally billed as the second act of scheduled back-to-back launches on Wednesday. However, after the booster landing anomaly, SpaceX decided to delay the launch of Starlink flight 9-5.
SpaceX is also trying to determine when it will next test launch its next Crew Dragon mission: Polaris Dawn. On Thursday, SpaceX said it was still working to identify a launch date that would have favorable weather for a splashdown off the coast of Florida about five days after launch.