ORLANDO, Fla., April 22 (UPI) — The weather is expected to be almost ideal for SpaceX’s Starlink launch attempt Wednesday afternoon from Florida — another mission to loft 60 satellites into orbit.
It’s the seventh such mission, scheduled for liftoff aboard a Falcon 9 rocket at 3:30 p.m. EDT from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center.
The launch will boost the Starlink constellation to 422 satellites, by far the largest such network in history.
The outlook for weather at launch time is 90 percent favorable, according to a Space Force forecast. Thursday is a backup day in case of problems, but the risk of storms and thick clouds grows to 50 percent that day.
“Dry conditions are expected during the [hour-long] launch window on Wednesday, with light east winds bringing a few cumulus clouds,” according to the Space Force forecast.
Elon Musk’s space company previously launched 60 Starlink satellites at a time in May, November, on Jan. 6 and 29, Feb. 17, and March 18, with two test satellites launched before that.
The planned satellite launch comes during restrictions on space center access due to the coronavirus pandemic, and as SpaceX prepares for a late May launch of the first crewed flight of NASA astronauts from U.S. soil since 2011.
Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are scheduled to be the first riders in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station.
SpaceX intends ultimately to launch thousands of satellites to beam broadband around the globe, to supply high-speed Internet everywhere, even in extreme weather or aboard high-speed jets.
Starlink satellites orbit at a height of about 340 miles above the Earth. By comparison, the Kármán line that defines space is 62 miles high, and the space station is more than 250 miles high.
The fairing previously supported launch of the AMOS-17 mission in August 2019 pic.twitter.com/1qNaL0uPLh— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 17, 2020
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