SpaceX's next Starlink launch will kick off busy period for the Space Coast

Updates: SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket and 60 Starlink communications satellites at 9:19 p.m. Monday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It was also the fourth successful landing of the rocket's first-stage booster.

Monday's launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral will ignite the way for a slate of high-profile missions over the next month, an appropriate premiere for the Space Coast's first liftoff of the year.

Teams at Launch Complex 40 are targeting 9:19 p.m. for the liftoff of the 230-foot-tall rocket with 60 Starlink communications satellites, which marks the opening of a 10-minute window. Weather for the attempt is expected to be at least 90% "go."

"Strong high pressure building across the southeastern U.S. will bring cool and dry conditions along the Space Coast for the next few days," forecasters with the Air Force's 45th Weather Squadron said Sunday. "Expect mostly clear skies with winds becoming light and variable by Monday evening’s launch window."

The latest forecast follows a successful test fire of the rocket's nine Merlin main engines at noon Saturday, a routine operation conducted before every SpaceX flight. But the test did differ in one major way: all 60 Starlink satellites were stacked atop the rocket during the firing, a departure from more than three years of tests without payloads.

SpaceX stopped firing rockets with satellites after a September 2016 Falcon 9 explosion destroyed a satellite – and a chunk of Launch Complex 40 – during pre-test fueling. That change meant teams had to raise the rocket, test fire, lower the rocket, attach the payload, then raise the rocket again.

Because Starlink satellites are built and operated by SpaceX, it remains to be seen whether the company will test fire rockets with external customer payloads in the near future.

The mission itself, meanwhile, will bring the company's internet-beaming constellation up to 180 satellites, or just a few short of Planet Labs, the No. 1 satellite operator in the world by number of active spacecraft on orbit. SpaceX ultimately hopes to deliver internet connectivity to users around the world, starting with North America first.

Monday's flight will mark the booster's fourth mission and include a landing on the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

The next month

Starlink kicks off at least two high-profile missions slated to launch from the Eastern Range over the next 30 days.

Just five days later on Saturday, SpaceX teams at Kennedy Space Center's pad 39A are tentatively scheduled to launch a Falcon 9 rocket on a never-before-seen mission: Crew Dragon's in-flight abort test.

After liftoff, the uncrewed capsule will detect an intentional emergency and fire its abort motors, pushing itself away from the "failing" rocket and saving the crew – if they had been on board. The booster is then expected to break apart over the Atlantic Ocean as the capsule descends to be picked up by rescue crews.

If all goes according to plan and data reviews look good, the in-flight abort, or IFA, will pave the way for SpaceX to launch astronauts from KSC sometime in the first half of this year.

Then on Feb. 5, a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket will take Solar Orbiter to space from Launch Complex 41, a high-profile science mission developed by the European Space Agency and NASA. At its closest, the spacecraft will get within 26 million miles of the sun to better understand its heliosphere, or bubble-like region of influence.

"It will take three years to reach this orbit," the Solar Orbiter mission profile reads. "When traveling at its fastest, Solar Orbiter will remain positioned over approximately the same region of the solar atmosphere as the sun rotates on its axis, allowing unprecedented observations."

SpaceX is also slated to launch yet another Starlink mission with 60 more satellites from Launch Complex 40 sometime between Jan. 11 in-flight abort and the Feb. 5 Solar Orbiter mission.

Contact Emre Kelly at aekelly@floridatoday.com or 321-242-3715. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @EmreKelly.

Launch Monday

Rocket: SpaceX Falcon 9

Mission: Starlink communications satellites

Launch Time: 9:19 p.m.

Launch Window: 10 minutes

Launch Complex: 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station

Weather: >90% "go"

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