SpaceX knocks out 1st of final 2 Space Coast launches of 2024

Space Launch Delta 45’s weather squadron forecasts a 60% chance of good launch conditions as a front moves through the Florida peninsula on Sunday.

This one, flying for the seventh time, including this year’s Crew-8 and Polaris Dawn missions, made a recovery landing on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas stationed in the Atlantic.

For the Space Coast, the KSC launch will mark 93 launches for the year, with all but five from SpaceX.

The Federal Aviation Administration only gave Jeff Bezos’ company a launch license for the heavy-lift rocket on Friday, which was also when Blue Origin was able to finally perform a test hot fire of the rocket on the pad at Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 36.

SpaceX’s final launch of the year could come at midnight with another Falcon 9 carrying 21 Starlink satellites set to lift off from KSC’s Pad 39-A during the launch window that runs until 3:28 a.m. and backup opportunities on Dec. 31 during the same window.

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The Sunday launch saw a Falcon 9 lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 carrying communication satellites for Astranis Space Technologies Corp.

Elon Musk’s company will have flown 134 missions of its Falcon family of rockets, with 62 from Cape Canaveral, 26 from KSC, including the two Falcon Heavy launches of the year, and 46 from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base. It also flew its in-development Starship and Super Heavy on four suborbital test flights from its Texas launch site Starbase.

The mission was delayed from a Dec. 20 attempt that saw the booster shut down as the countdown clock reached 0. SpaceX ended up switching boosters for the mission.

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