Pre-week delays set up a weekend of rapid launches in Florida, weather permitting, starting with a United Launch Alliance Delta Four Heavy flight on Saturday and, in all likelihood, two SpaceX flights on Sunday just nine hours apart, marking the company’s 100 and 101 orbitals. Missions.
If SpaceX advances and the rockets take off, and the weather is ideal, it would mark the shortest era between two U.S. orbital-class missions since 1966.
But ULA takes precedence with plans to launch a resilient Delta Four Heavy, one of five left in the company’s inventory, early Saturday to put an Office of Reconnaissance spy satellite into orbit.
Meteorologists expect an 80% chance of weather, takeoff from Station 37 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base is scheduled for 2:04 a.m.EDT on Saturday.
The ULA had originally planned to launch the national security project on Wednesday, paving the way for SpaceX to launch a Falcon nine rocket that in the past flew from the complex near 40 on Friday night to place Argentina’s SAOCOM 1B remote sensing satellite in polar orbit.
The California-based rocket manufacturer planned to launch the company’s twelfth batch of Starlink Internet relay satellites from Kennedy Space Center station 39A on Saturday morning. The flight then moved to Sunday.
Delta Four was delayed one day at the request of the NRO and returned to Saturday due to technical upheavals that occurred in an early Thursday release attempt.
This created the option for any of SpaceX’s releases on Sunday. Air Force release forecasts and high sea warnings indicated that Starlink’s flight provisionally targeted the release of Station 39A at 10:08 a.m. on Sunday with the release of SAOCOM 1B from Station 40 at 7:18 p.m.
The launch of THE SAOCOM-1B will be the first since 1969 on a southward path to an orbit around the Earth’s poles.
But the weather can be a problem. The 46 Wing Space Wing forecast on Friday predicted a 50% chance of appropriate situations on Sunday morning, down to 40% that night.