SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to make one other try to launch Amazon Project Kuiper mission – Spaceflight Now

A SpaceX Falcon 9 will make one other try Sunday to launch 24 satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper web service after three earlier makes an attempt have been scrubbed.

Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida is scheduled for 8:57 a.m. EDT (12:57 UTC). Sunday’s launch window closes 27 minutes later. Spaceflight Now may have reside protection starting about an hour previous to liftoff.

The forty fifth Weather Squadron, based mostly at Cape Canaveral, gave the mission a 55 % probability of acceptable climate for launch. The major issues within the forecast issued Saturday have been for violations of the cumulus cloud, anvil cloud and lightning guidelines.

This would be the fourth scheduled launch try for the mission, designated KF-02. During the primary countdown on Thursday, SpaceX stopped the clock previous to the beginning of fueling and later mentioned on social media it had delayed the launch a day to permit for “additional vehicle checkouts.”

The Falcon 9 was lowered into the horizontal place at pad 40, presumably to work on a technical downside with the rocket. Then, just some hours earlier than the deliberate T-0 on Friday, the corporate introduced the launch was referred to as off and rescheduled for Saturday.

For Saturday’s launch try, the forty fifth Weather Squadron was forecasting solely a 40 % probability for favorable climate however supplied some hope that rain clouds would keep offshore. However, it was to not be. The countdown was halted by the launch director with 28 seconds left on the clock, as heavy rain began to fall on the pad.

The booster for the KF-02 mission is a transformed Falcon Heavy core stage that’s flying for the primary time. In a May 7 social media submit, Jon Edwards, SpaceX vp of Falcon and Dragon, mentioned that B1091 shall be used as a Falcon 9 booster “a handful of times before being reconfigured and flying as a Falcon Heavy” middle booster.

If climate permits, the Falcon 9 will liftoff on a north-easterly trajectory, and the first-stage booster will goal a touchdown on SpaceX’s drone ship ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’ a little bit greater than eight minutes later. If profitable, this would be the one hundred and twentieth booster touchdown on this vessel and the 486th booster touchdown up to now.

About eight and a half minutes into flight, Falcon 9’s second stage will place the Kuiper satellites into an preliminary parking orbit, earlier than making a brief three-second burn virtually 53 minutes into flight to circularize the orbit. The roughly seven-minute satellite tv for pc deployment sequence begins at T+56 minutes, 18 seconds.