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Update July 13, 5:58 a.m. EDT (0958 UTC): SpaceX landed its booster on the droneship.
SpaceX flew a flight-proven Falcon rocket booster for a 600th time when it launched the Starlink 10-45 mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Tuesday morning. This was the 28th flight for the booster with the tail number 1080.
The predawn flight added another 29 broadband internet satellites to SpaceX’s low Earth orbit constellation. The company has more than 10,800 spacecraft in low Earth orbit.
Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 happened at 5:10 a.m. EDT (0910 UTC). The rocket flew on a north-easterly trajectory upon leaving the pad.
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The 45th Weather Squadron forecast a 90 percent chance for favorable weather at the opening of the window, which improves to 95 percent as time goes on. Meteorologists are watching out the slight possibility of the rocket flying through thick clouds, which could generate lightning.
“Some lingering thick clouds left over by the evening convection may be present at the beginning of the launch window but should gradually dissipate through the window,” launch weather officers wrote. “As a result, we have raised the POV slightly at the beginning of tonight’s launch window, but overall good weather is expected.”
SpaceX launch the Starlink 10-45 mission using the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1080. This was its 28th flight following the launches of two crew flights for Axiom Space, the European Space Agency’s Euclid observatory, and Northrop Grumman’s NG-21.
Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1080 landed on the droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’, positioned in the Atlantic Ocean. This was the 161st landing on this vessel and the 638th booster landing for the company to date.
