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(L)A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket stands at pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center several hours before a scheduled launch in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and (R) A Falcon 9 rocket stands at Cape Canaveral’s SLC-40 pad ahead of launching the Starlink 6-7 mission in July 2023.
Getty (L) | SpaceX (R)
SpaceX on Thursday night may break a record that’s stood for over half a century, with back-to-back launches set to fly from Florida’s Space Coast.
The company is targeting 10:20 p.m. ET for the launch of its Falcon 9 rocket from the Space Force’s Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40), carrying Starlink satellites.
A couple miles away, and potentially lifting off about 45 minutes later, a Falcon Heavy rocket stands at Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, preparing to deliver the Jupiter 3 satellite for broadband provider EchoStar. SpaceX said the Falcon Heavy launch window opens at 11:04 p.m. ET and runs for 99 minutes.
Space Launch Delta 45 is the unit of the U.S. Space Force that manages the Eastern Range: A designated U.S. rocket range for launches from either Kennedy or Cape Canaveral.
SLD 45 noted in social media posts on Thursday that the pair of SpaceX launches may break a record set by the Gemini 11 mission in September 1966. That NASA mission used an Atlas-Agena D rocket and a modified Titan II rocket, which launched 1 hour, 37 minutes and 25 seconds apart.
“This could represent the shortest time between Earth to orbit launches from the Eastern Range in our written records,” SLD 45 wrote. “Follow along as we attempt to re-write the record books on the Space Coast!
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But, as is often a major factor in rocket launches, weather may delay one or both of the SpaceX launches. Space Force has a 2 hour and 40 minute window for the launches to get off the ground, but its most recent forecast shows only a 40% probability of the sky being clear. Rocket launches require that regulators clear windows of time, in part due to the increasingly crowded airspace needed for each mission.
The launches represent SpaceX’s 51st and 52nd this year.
Falcon 9 livestream
Falcon Heavy livestream
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