Launch Roundup – Falcon 9 targets first Booster Landing in the Bahamas

on

Three SpaceX Falcon 9 Starlink missions and a Rocket Lab Electron launching from New Zealand make up the launch manifest for this week. The first Starlink flight will see the long-anticipated first booster landing in Bahamian waters, while the Electron flight marks this successful vehicle’s 60th mission.

SpaceX Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 10-12 

A Falcon 9 will lift 23 Starlink V2 Mini satellites to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) on Tuesday, Feb. 18. SpaceX is currently targeting six minutes after the start of a four-hour window for liftoff at 6:06 PM EST (23:06 UTC). The Starlink Group 10-12 mission will launch from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (SFS) in Florida. The booster will fly on a southeasterly trajectory from the launch site.

Following the launch, the booster will separate from the second stage and payloads, and descend to land on the SpaceX autonomous droneship Just Read The Instructions, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean, just off the Bahamas for the first time. This has been made possible following an agreement with the Bahamian authorities. The sheltered, calmer waters near the island of Exuma will allow more reliable landing conditions than those previously experienced in the more turbulent open seas of the Atlantic. The new landing site will also enable SpaceX to fly additional trajectories out of the Cape. The booster and droneship will, at least for the initial landings at this location, return to Port Canaveral, as with all previous Atlantic landings.

The booster supporting this flight will be B1080. This will be the 16th flight for this booster, which previously flew Axion 2, Euclid, Starlink Group 6-11, Starlink Group 6-24, Axion 3, CRS-30, Starlink Group 6-52, Starlink Group 6-62, Astra 1P/SES-24, CRS-21, Starlink Group 10-10, Starlink Group 6-69, Starlink Group 12-1, Starlink Group 12-2, and Starlink Group 12-4.

The booster’s first flight was on May 21, 2023, and this is its second flight of 2025.

SpaceX’s workhorse, Falcon 9 is a 3.9-meter diameter, 70-meter-high high two-stage rocket. The first stage booster is powered by nine Merlin 1D engines, while the second stage utilizes a single vacuum-optimized Merlin engine. Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are the first and only reusable orbital rockets in operational service today, with one Falcon booster (B1067 on Starlink Group 12-8) having flown twenty-six flights. The two payload fairings are also recovered and reused after flight.

Rocket Lab Electron | BlackSky Gen-3 Mission 1 

With the Rocket Lab mission title of “Fasten Your Space Belts”, the 60th Electron mission is due to launch on Tuesday, Feb.18, at 23:15 UTC. Electron will fly from Rocket Lab LC-1B at the Māhia Peninsula in New Zealand, taking a southeasterly course to place the payload into LEO.

BlackSky Technology has contracted Rocket Lab to launch a constellation of five new generation Earth-imaging satellites, providing both imagery and multiple sensors.

BlackSky claims that the Gen-3 constellation will offer mission-critical insights using very high-resolution, rapid-revisit 35-centimeter imagery. These are enhanced with AI-enabled analytics delivered at industry-leading speed and scale combining very high-resolution imagery with high-frequency monitoring.

Electron is a two-stage booster with an additional kick stage. The first stage features nine Rutherford sea-level engines, each producing 21 kN, or 4,800 pounds-force (lbf), of thrust at liftoff and peaking at 25 kN (5,600 lbf). The second stage includes a Rutherford vacuum engine with 25.8 kN (5,800 lbf) of thrust. Both variants of Rutherford are powered by electric pumps as opposed to traditional gas turbines. The kick stage utilizes an unspecified bi-propellant fuel-powered Curie engine. Both the Rutherford and Curie engines are largely 3D-printed, and the two main stages are of a carbon-composite construction.

SpaceX Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 15-1

The next Starlink launch will take place from SpaceX’s West Coast facility at Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Liftoff is targeted for Wednesday, Feb. 19, at 4:01 PM PST (Thursday, Feb. 20, at 00:01 UTC).

Falcon 9 will fly a southeasterly trajectory to place the payload of V2 Mini Starlink satellites into LEO. The unknown booster will land on SpaceX’s West Coast droneship Of Course I Still Love You stationed approximately 640 km downrange of the launch site.

SpaceX Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 12-14 

East Coast Starlink launches will return to SLC-40 Cape Canaveral SFS on Thursday, Feb. 20 at 7:00 PM EST (Friday, Feb. 21, at 00:39 UTC). The other regularly used launchpad for Starlink missions, LC-39A, is unlikely to be available for Starlink missions until after the launch of the IM-2 mission to the Moon, currently scheduled for February 28, also by Falcon 9.

The unknown booster will fly a southeasterly trajectory to place the expected payload of both V2 Mini and Direct to Cell Starlink variants into LEO. The landing site and recovery vessels have not yet been announced for this mission.

(Lead image: Falcon 9 lifts another batch of Starlinks from SLC-40 in Florida.   Credit: SpaceX)

The post Launch Roundup – Falcon 9 targets first Booster Landing in the Bahamas appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com.



Comments

Post a Comment