SpaceX crews in Cape Canaveral are ready for the company’s 10th Falcon 9 rocket launch on Wednesday, another flight dedicated to the delivery of satellites around the Starlink Internet network.
Like seven of the nine previous Falcon 9 missions this year, the rocket awaiting explosion on Wednesday will aim to release 60 Starlink satellites into orbit nearly 270 kilometers above the earth. The 60 spacecraft will then use their electric buoy on board to reach an altitude of 550 kilometers to join more than 1,300 other Starlink satellites that provide internet service to consumers.
The 229-foot-long (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket is expected to ignite its nine Merlin 1D kerosene engines at 12:34 EDT (1634 GMT) and fire off Route 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The launch will be Florida’s first day of the Space Coast explosion since January, following a series of late-night and pre-emptive Falcon 9 launches in recent months.
The Falcon 9 goes northeast from Cape Canaveral with the 60 Starlink satellites, and follows an orbit parallel to the U.S. east coast to place the broadband jet vessels in an orbit tilted 53 degrees to the equator.
After the speed of sound has exceeded the stratosphere in the stratosphere, the Falcon 9 will turn off its first stage boost about two and a half minutes into the mission. The 15-story rocket will return to Earth to place a vertical landing on a SpaceX’s recycling vessel in the Atlantic Ocean, a few hundred miles east of Charleston, South Carolina.
The booster will use its mid-engine until the final brake burn just before touching the drone about eight-and-a-half minutes after launch. The reusable first flight on Wednesday’s mission – tail number B1058 – recorded six previous flights to space and back, beginning with the lifting of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule in May last year at the first launch of US-based astronauts in nearly nine year.
Recently, the booster was launched on March 11 and landed on a mission with 60 Starlink satellites.
As the first phase enters for a landing, the Falcon 9’s second phase will spin in a single orbit with a single Merlin engine. The Falcon 9’s payload mantle, which cocoons the Starlink during the first few minutes of the flight, will rise to the rocket above the thick, lower levels of the atmosphere.
The boot, or nose cone, will separate in two halves to parachute to the Atlantic Ocean to retrieve it with a SpaceX recovery boat. Half of the fairgrounds that flew on Wednesday have already been launched three times, and the other parachute has flown once.
After reaching a preliminary orbit, the second phase will be back in the mission shortly after 45 minutes to place the 60 satellites in the correct orbit for separation.
The 60 Starlink satellites, each weighing about 573 pounds (260 kilograms), will separate the second phase of the Falcon 9 rocket at 13:38 EDT (1738 GMT).
Wednesday will be SpaceX’s 10th Falcon 9 mission so far in 2021, a record pace for SpaceX to start a year.
With this mission, SpaceX 1445 will deploy Starlink satellites on 26 launchers, including prototypes and failed spacecraft. The active fleet of Starlink spacecraft will reach approximately 1,380 satellites with the fresh data delivery stations to be lifted on Wednesday.
This is more than six times as many active satellites as any other operator.
According to Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, the Starlink fleet will have the ability to provide uninterrupted internet service to consumers with a few more launches.
The Federal Communications Commission has authorized SpaceX to use approximately 12,000 Starlink satellites operating on Ku-band, Ka-band and V-band frequencies, and at different heights and slopes in low-Earth orbits.
SpaceX has been testing the Starlink network’s speed and latency since last year using a beta testing program. Customers in the northern United States, Canada, parts of Europe, Australia and New Zealand are already participating in the beta testing.
Shotwell told a virtual panel, hosted as part of the Satellite 2021 conference, that SpaceX is focusing on ‘performance brands’ before switching the Starlink network to a full commercial service.
“We still have a lot of work to do to make the network reliable,” Shotwell said. ‘We still have drops, not necessarily just because of the satellites in the sky. So we will move away from beta if we have a great product that we are very proud of.
“Most of the people who signed up for the beta program were completely disconnected and desperate and just liked the fact that they could do anything online, or they were pretty tech experts testing the network and giving us feedback,” she said. “So I think the beta phase is very useful.”
SpaceX accepts pre-orders from prospective Starlink consumers, who can pay $ 99 to book their place in the queue to get Starlink service when available in their area. For people in the southern United States and other regions with lower latitudes, it should come later this year, SpaceX says.
Once confirmed, customers will pay $ 499 for a Starlink antenna and modem, plus $ 50 for shipping and handling, SpaceX says. A subscription costs $ 99 per month.
While SpaceX has indicated that the Starlink network could one day count as many as 42,000 satellites, Shotwell said the actual number of Starlink spacecraft in orbit at any given time depends on market demand.
“The plan is to operate a network that is very reliable, with low latency and accessible to everyone, literally on the planet,” she said on Tuesday. ‘And we’ll add satellites to add capacity. Once we have the network, the mesh network, each new launch basically just adds capacity so we can monitor how it’s going and how our service is, and if it’s good and people like it, we’ll continue to add satellites as we are allowed. ”
Future Falcon 9 launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California will allow Starlink satellites in polar orbits to expand the reach of the network and enable Internet service in the Arctic and Antarctic, a capability the U.S. military wants one of the Starlink programs’ most lucrative markets.
Read our previous story for details on Vandenberg’s Starlink launches.
Shotwell predicted on Tuesday that the Starlink network would be able to serve “every rural household in the United States” within three to five years.
“We are doing the analyzes for other countries as well,” she said. ‘We initially focus on the US because they speak English, and that they are close. If they have a problem with their dish, we can send one quickly. But we definitely want to expand this capability beyond the US and Canada. ”
One major challenge is to reduce the cost of building antennas for consumers to receive Internet signals from Starlink satellites. The terminal can automatically switch from satellite to satellite if the Starlink spacecraft flies overhead.
Shotwell said SpaceX is currently building Starlink user terminals for less than $ 1,500, up from an earlier cost of $ 3,000 per unit.
“We’re not asking our customers what it costs now to build these terminals,” Shotwell said. “But we see that our terminal will come within a few hundred dollars within the next year or two.”
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