SpaceX switches up missions to set up Cape Canaveral launch tonight

It has been 11 days since SpaceX final lit up the House Coast sky with a rocket launch, the longest run between launches in additional than a 12 months.

It isn’t for an absence of attempting, although, however unhealthy climate and a scrub because the countdown clock hit 0 final week led to SpaceX taking down a Falcon 9 rocket for a Starlink mission and switching it up with a Falcon 9 to launch a European TV satellite on Tuesday evening.

The SES 24 mission flying the ASTRA 1P communication satellite for Luxembourg-based communications firm SES is about to launch from Cape Canaveral House Pressure Station’s House Launch Complicated 40 throughout a window that runs from 5:35-8:24 p.m. The satellite will service TV markets in Germany, Spain and France.

House Launch Delta 45’s climate squadron forecasts solely a 55% likelihood for good situations, with liftoff winds and the presence of cumulus clouds a priority. The identical points stay within the occasion of a 24-hour scrub, worsening to solely a forty five% likelihood of excellent situations.

If it does launch, the first-stage booster will probably be making its ninth flight and can intention for a touchdown downrange on the droneship Simply Learn the Directions.

SpaceX final launched on the House Coast on June 7, and the practically 11 full days between launches can be the longest since a more-than-12-day run from April 7-19, 2023. It tried to launch from the Cape final week, however a problem with the Falcon 9 at ignition compelled a scrub, and that mission’s new launch date has but to be introduced.

The launch marks the forty fifth from both Canaveral or neighboring Kennedy House Heart for the 12 months, with all besides three coming from SpaceX.

The subsequent launch from KSC could possibly be SpaceX’s first Falcon Heavy launch of the 12 months, concentrating on a June 25 liftoff from Launch Pad 39-A throughout a two-hour window that opens at 5:16 p.m. Its payload is the GOES-U satellite for the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that can subsequent 12 months take over the duties of watching the Atlantic basin for tropical and different harmful climate.

2024 Orlando Sentinel. Distributed by Tribune Content material Company, LLC.