After being delayed due to Hurricane Hilary last week, which forced the droneship to retreat to the Port of San Diego, SpaceX successfully launched 21 V2 mini Starlink satellites.
Originally meant to launch earlier in the evening, SpaceX waited until the very end of their window, and the mission lifted off at 2:37 a.m. PT (09:37 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Station.
Liftoff! pic.twitter.com/AvzApSXTnU
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 22, 2023
This Starlink mission, Group 7-1, was inserted into a 53-degree orbital inclination with the Starlinks separating from the second stage just over an hour after lift-off. This brings the total number of Starlink satellites launched to 4,983 of which 269 are the V2 mini variant.
The Falcon 9 on this mission was B1061, which launched and landed for the 15th time. It successfully landed on the droneship ‘Of Course I Still Love You’ eight and a half minutes after taking off.
Falcon 9’s first stage has landed on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship pic.twitter.com/DwgDDCC895
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 22, 2023
This launch marked the 57th mission of the year for SpaceX, which is slowly closing on its yearly record of 61.
SpaceX is looking to launch the next batch of Starlink satellites as early as this evening, no earlier than 8:47 p.m. ET, the weather outlook as of now shows only a 15% chance of violating weather constraints. If, for some reason, the launch does not occur this evening, it is likely they will postpone the launch until after the Crew 7 mission scheduled for August 25th as it is a much higher priority mission.
One different aspect of the Group 7-1 mission was the webcast, which, most likely due to the delays, did not have a webcast host and played the launch audio from mission control.
Questions or comments? Shoot me an email at rangle@teslarati.com, or Tweet me @RDAnglePhoto.
