With seven Falcon launches, nine already completed this month, SspeedX’s immediate speed continues with 3 more flights originally scheduled for next week from the East and West coasts. Since then, one of the two launches scheduled for Wednesday, April 17, has been postponed, leaving out the Starlink missions that flew on Wednesdays and Thursdays. In addition, a Chinese Chang Zheng 2D was presented on Monday and some others on Saturday.
Not content with breaking new cadence records in the first quarter of the year with an impressive 31 launches, SpaceX continued to set new milestones last week. The company celebrated the 20th launch and landing of a booster with the B1062, the Starlink 6-49 project. A booster that carried 8 astronauts into space. The company also completed 3 orbital launches from Vandenberg in just 11 days, adding the fastest turnaround time ever recorded for Space Launch Complex (SLC) 4E, in four and a half days between USSF-62 and Starlink Group 8-1 projects.
Thursday’s Starlink Group 6-52 project is the company’s 40th Falcon 9 project to date. To put this in context and its expansion cadence, it took SpaceX until the end of June last year to achieve this point, and the beginning of September to achieve it. level in 2022. This week a year ago, the company had announced 23 projects so far.
While everything is going according to plan and having completed seven missions in April, the company planned to end this week with ten Falcon flights and nine completed flights. Just a few months ago, the team celebrated this feat as a novelty every month. milestone at the end of January.
– SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 13, 2024
The unplanned postponement of WorldView Legion 1 and 2 on the eve of Wednesday’s scheduled launch means the company has ended the week with nine flights so far this month; That launch has now been postponed until next week. It is making progress towards the still ambitious target of 148 flights this year and is also close to achieving 300 successful recoveries, which could be completed before the end of April.
The U. S. and China account for 82% of year-to-date releases, with China being the second busiest country in terms of releases, with 15 in total at the start of this week. The launch of Chang Zheng 2D in the early hours of Monday morning further surpassed that figure, putting a satellite of Earth into orbit. As of earlier this week, there have been a total of 72 orbital launches worldwide so far this year, with SpaceX accounting for about 52% of all orbital launches. This year.
Chang Zheng 2D | SuperView Neo 3-01
A Chang Zheng 2D (CZ-2D) introduced from Site 9401 (SLS-2) at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China on Monday, April 15 at 04:12 UTC, at the beginning of a brief 25-minute launch window.
This is the third flight of the CZ-2D double-decker vehicle this year, all conducted over a period of just over three weeks. The rocket has already placed the secret Yaogan 42-01 remote sensing satellite and the Yunhai-2 Group 02 weather satellites. in low-Earth orbit for the Chinese military in recent weeks.
This time, the payload was the Earth’s SuperView Neo 3-01 satellite, which is heading into a sun-synchronous orbit. Built for China Siwei Survey and Mapping Technology Co. Ltd. By the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the satellite offers a 0. 5-meter solution in nine wavelength bands of symbols and a 130-kilometer-wide band of images. The SuperView Neo constellation is expected to expand to 28 satellites, the first 4 of which were introduced in pairs in April and July 2022.
The CZ-2D is a reliable tool, produced through the Shanghai State Academy of Spaceflight Technology. It has been actively transporting satellites to solar synchronous orbits and other low-Earth orbits for more than 30 years. With 87 previous launches under its belt, the CZ-2D vehicle suffered a partial failure, more than seven years ago and 55 flights, when payloads were placed in a lower-than-expected orbit.
– Starlink (@Starlink) April 9, 2024
Falcon Nine Block Five | Starlink Group 6-Five1
The first Starlink project of the week was unveiled from Launch Complex 3nineA at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, April 17 at 5:26 p. m. EDT (9:26 p. m. UTC). As with other projects in this Group 6 hull, Falcon Nine carried a batch of 23 Starlink v2 Mini satellites to an initial orbit of 284 to 292 kilometers, inclined 43 degrees.
Bob’s support shipment departed Port Canaveral with the drone for this project on Sunday. The booster, B1077, was on its 12th flight and is no stranger to Starlink Group 6 projects. He also led Crew-5 on its maiden flight, as well as the CRS. -28 and CRS NG-20 to the International Space Station. The booster effectively landed on the Just Read the Instructions autonomous drone, located downstream in the Atlantic, about 8 1/2 minutes after launch.
This is the 50th project in group 6 of the constellation, and more will follow. Recent projects are submitted in numerical order, with the exception of Group 6-50 which is not listed lately.
– SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 17, 2024
Falcon Nine Block Five | Starlink Group 6-five2
The second Starlink project of the week presented from close up to SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Station, with a batch of Starlink v2 Mini satellites in the same hull as the constellation’s Group 6. Liftoff took place at 6:40 a. m. EDT (22:40 UTC) at the start of a four-and-a-half-hour launch window on Thursday, April 18.
The booster, the B1080, is making its seventh flight and has only been flying since last May. During this time, he supported two previous Starlink projects in the same shell, two manned flights for Axiom-2 and Axiom-3, the CRS-30. project to send to the ISS and release the Euclid telescope. Despite problems with this component of SpaceX’s livestream, it has been shown to have successfully landed on the autonomous drone A Shortfall of Gravitas, extra downstream, which recently supported the 20th landing of a booster with B1062. It is the 66th landing of this 66-attempt drone, the 299th landing of the Falcon booster, and the 225th successful landing since the last failure.
SLC-40 was the platform from which the 6-49 Group and 6-48 Group missions were introduced last week; The latter was unusually delayed twice in its release window for unspoken reasons that didn’t appear to be related to weather. This was SpaceX’s 180th launch from this pad.
As stated in the introduction, this is already SpaceX’s 40th Falcon Nine project of the year and the 325th Falcon Nine orbital project to date. Earlier this week, 6,18 Starlink satellites had been launched, of which 402 had returned, and 5,196 were in operational orbit.
Chang Zheng 2D | Unknown payload
A Chang Zheng 2D (CZ-2D) moment was unveiled this week, this time from LC-3 at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in China. Liftoff on Saturday, April 20 at 23:34 UTC, a brief launch window of 21 minutes.
As with some Chinese launches, prior to launch there was uncertainty about the payload. On board was the army’s Yaogan 42-02 “remote sensing” satellite, the main points of which are classified. This is the fourth flight of the CZ-This year, the double-decker 2D vehicle, which will take up position in 30 days, and the 76th orbital launch attempt of the year overall.
(Main image: 20th launch of the Falcon nine B1062 booster. Credit: Max Evans for NSF)
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