Despite a delay in launching a SpaceX rocket with a moonbound payload from Kennedy Space Center overnight, the company has another one lined up from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station ready to fly Wednesday — and there’s a Starlink satellite launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base on the same day.
And that aborted overnight launch is now set to lift off early Thursday morning East Coast time.
A Falcon 9 rocket on the classified USSF-124 mission for the Space Force is set to lift off from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 targeting the front end of a four-hour window that runs from 2:30-6:30 p.m. Pacific time Wednesday.
Space Launch Delta 45’s weather squadron forecasts a better than 95% chance for good conditions.
The first-stage booster is making its seventh flight and will aim for a recovery touchdown back at Canaveral’s Landing Zone 2, meaning one or more sonic booms could be heard across parts of Central Florida.
The payloads includes two satellites for the Missile Defense Agency and four satellites for the Space Development Agency headed to low-Earth orbit, according to the Space Force’s Space Systems Command. It’s the 11th National Security Space Launch on a SpaceX rocket.
“With each national security launch, we continue to strengthen America’s capabilities and its deterrence in the face of growing threats while adding stability to a very dynamic world,” said Space Systems Command’s Col. Jim Horne in a press release. “It’s what we do in the Space Force, and we take that charge seriously.”
Part of what could be three launches in under eight hours, SpaceX has another Falcon 9 launch in California planned at 4:30 p.m. Pacific time Wednesday from Vandenberg Space Force Base to fly up 22 of the company’s Starlink satellites, and then early Thursday has a chance again to send up the IM-1 machine for commercial company Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lunar lander Odysseus atop a Falcon 9 from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A targeting a 1:05 a.m. Eastern time liftoff.
An issue loading methane propellant into the lunar lander during Tuesday night preparations forced SpaceX to halt launch operations and push to retry for what would be the second day of a three-day window this month available for the launch so the lander can hit its target landing window on the moon on Feb. 22. The lander is the second mission under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, but could be the first to actually make it to the moon.
SpaceX has flown 12 missions from its three launch pads on the two coasts already in 2024, and success on these would bring that total to 15, part of a year Elon Musk has said could see as many as 150 launches.
If both Space Coast launches fly, it would bring Florida’s launch total to 10, nine of which would have been from SpaceX.