SpaceX

A Falcon 9 rocket streaks across the sky over Central Florida amid the Starlink 6-63 mission on May 23, 2023. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now Update 11:15 p.m. EDT: SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX completed its third Falcon 9 launch in less than 48 hours with a mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. As with its launch Wednesday night, SpaceX sent another 23 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit. Either serendipitously or intentionally, the Starlink 6-63 mission fell on the fifth anniversary of the first dedicated Starlink launch, Starlink v0.9 on May 23, 2019. The launch times of the two missions are also coincidentally very similar. Thursday night’s flight lifted off at 10:45 p.m. EDT (0245 UTC) and its five-year counterpart launched at 10:30 p.m. EDT (0230 UTC). The ...

An illustration of the NROL-146 mission patch design. Graphic: NRO The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is set to start building a constellation of unknown size with a middle-of-the-night launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The mission, dubbed NROL-146, features an undisclosed number of satellites riding onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) is set for the start of a launch window that opens 1 a.m. PDT (4 a.m. EDT, 0800 UTC). Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about 30 minutes prior to liftoff. The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, tail number B1071 in the SpaceX fleet, will launching for a 16th time. It’s first two flights were for NRO missions and it also launched a pair of Transporte...