A Falcon 9 rocket soars through thick fog around Florida’s Space Coast during the launch of the Starlink 6-41 mission on Monday, March 4, 2024. Image: Pete Carstens/Max Q Productions for Spaceflight Now
Coming on the heels of the successful launch of the four-person Crew-8 mission heading up to the International Space Station, SpaceX pulled off another Falcon 9 launch from the Cape. The Starlink 6-41 mission saw another batch of 23 internet satellites head up to join the growing constellation in low Earth orbit.
Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station happened 6:56 p.m. EST (2356 UTC). The mission rounded out the third Falcon 9 launch in just over 20 hours across the company’s three launch pads between Florida and California.
This was the 13th launch of the Falcon 9 first stage booster, B1073, in the SpaceX fleet. It landed on the droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas,’ a little more than eight minutes into the flight. It marked the 60th booster landing on ASOG and the 281st overall booster landing to date.
In the midst of the Falcon 9 second stage’s coast phase, SpaceX completed the deployment of the remaining payloads manifested as part of the Transporter-10 mission, which launched less than two hours prior from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
As a back drop to both of these, teams with both SpaceX and NASA continue to monitor the health of the Crew-8 astronauts and cosmonaut as well as their Crew Dragon spacecraft as its journey to the International Space Station continues. Docking is expected early Tuesday morning.