SpaceX is preparing to launch a
Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station early Friday morning to kick off a weekend that could see three missions for the company. The Starlink 6-47 mission will liftoff no earlier than 2:14 a.m. EDT (0614 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40). Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about an hour prior to liftoff. The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission will land on the
SpaceX droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas,’ about 8.5 minutes after liftoff. This will be the 64th booster landing on ASOG and the 292nd booster landing to date. The mission comes as SpaceX is preparing for two other Falcon 9 launches that could take place over the weekend: a Starlink mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Starlink 8-1, and a rideshare mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center called “Bandwagon-1.” The latter is the first of its kind for the company and will send a collection of small satellites to a mid-inclination orbit. Passengers include Capella Space’s Acadia-4 satellite, HawkEye 360’s clusters 8 and 9 (six satellites total) and iQPS’s QPS-SAR-7 or “ Tsukuyomi-2 ” satellite. On Wednesday, SpaceX also announced a new step towards for its next
astronaut mission, Polaris Dawn. The
Crew Dragon spacecraft named “Resilience” is preparing to begin vacuum chamber testing, which will “will recreate expected conditions in space by lowering and raising the vehicle’s pressures to ensure Dragon performs as expected both during and after the first commercial spacewalk,” according to SpaceX. The Polaris Dawn mission is expected to launch sometime over the summer of 2024. The Polaris Dawn Dragon is headed to vacuum chamber testing! SpaceX teams celebrate Dragon's departure with @rookisaacman , @KiddPoteet , @Gillis_SarahE , and @annawmenon ahead of launching to orbit this summer pic.twitter.com/WFjp7pKK7B — SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 3, 2024