Live Coverage: Another Falcon 9 gets ready to hit 17-flight milestone

Spaceflight Now will provide live coverage of the Starlink 6-18 launch from Cape Canaveral, with commentary, starting about an hour before launch.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Saturday night with a booster making its 17th flight. It will be only the second to reach this milestone and the 200th time SpaceX has launched a previously flown Falcon 9 first stage. Liftoff, with 22 Starlink satellites inside its payload fairing, is scheduled for 9:07 p.m. EDT (0107 UTC Sunday).

The first stage for this Starlink 6-18 mission, is booster 1060, which first flew in June 2020 carrying the GPS 3-3 satellite for the U.S. Space Force and went on to fly the Turksat 5A, Transporter-2, Intelsat G-33/G-34 and Transporter-6 mission, plus 11 Starlink delivery flights.

Just four days ago, booster 1058 became the first Falcon 9 first stage to make a 17th flight on the Starlink 6-17 mission. SpaceX had previously identified B1060 as the first stage for that mission but corrected the error on its website after the launch.

SpaceX recently re-certified its Falcon 9 first-stage fleet for 20 reuses, five more than the previous rating.

File photo of a Falcon 9 prior to a previous Starlink satellite delivery mission. Image: SpaceX.

Excellent weather is forecast for Saturday night. U.S. Space Force meteorologists, in a forecast issued Friday, predicted only a 5-percent chance of a weather rule violation. Should SpaceX need to the delay the launch it has additional launch opportunities at 9:57 p.m. EDT (0157 UTC), 11:38 p.m. EDT (0338 UTC) and 12:05 a.m. EDT (0405 UTC). Another four launch opportunities are available Sunday night.

After lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the Falcon 9 will roll and pitch on to a trajectory that will take it south-east. Following stage separation, about two and half minutes into flight, booster 1060 will arc towards a landing on the drone ship “Just Read the Instructions” which will be stationed about 420 miles (675 km) downrange in the Atlantic east of the Bahamas.

The single Merlin Vacuum engine of the second stage will burn for about six minutes to reach a parking orbit. A two-second burn 53 minutes 57 seconds into flight will refine the orbit before the 22 Starlink satellites are deployed into a 185×178 mile (297x286km) orbit. Separation of the V2 Mini Starlink satellites will occur about one hour five minutes after launch.