24.04.2025
SpaceX targeting Thursday night for next Falcon 9 rocket launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida
On the heels of a pair of photogenic launches from Florida's Space Coast, SpaceX is now targeting Thursday, April 24, for its next Falcon 9 rocket liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The 4½-hour launch window extends from 9:32 p.m. Thursday to 2:03 p.m. Friday, a Federal Aviation Administration operations plan advisory shows. SpaceX has yet to publicly announce this Starlink 6-74 mission.
The rocket will lift off from Launch Complex 40 and boost another payload of Starlink broadband satellites up into low-Earth orbit. The Falcon 9 first-stage booster will target landing atop a SpaceX drone ship offshore hundreds of miles from the Cape, so no Central Florida sonic booms should occur.
Thursday night's National Weather Service forecast calls for partly cloudy skies, a low around 68 and mild east wind about 10 mph at the Space Force installation.
The Starlink mission is scheduled to launch three days after April 21's twin liftoffs from Florida's Space Coast. First, a Falcon 9 took flight hours before dawn carrying a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft packed with nearly 6,700 pounds of cargo to the International Space Station. That rocket launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
Then 16½ hours later, a second Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on the Bandwagon-3 mission, a rideshare flight for small satellites owned by a variety of private companies.
"Two successful launches in one day? Just another Florida thing," Space Florida officials said in a tweet.
"Congratulations to @SpaceX on back-to-back liftoffs this Monday. Only in the Sunshine State are we sending rockets to space multiple times a week — sometimes even multiple times a day!" the tweet said.
Coupled with a California Falcon 9 launch on April 20 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, SpaceX sent up three rockets within a roughly 36-hour span.
Quelle: Florida Today