Update March 11, 11:45 p.m. ET: SpaceX scrubbed the launch and is now targeting Wednesday for liftoff following the Crew-10 mission.
SpaceX once again stood down from its latest attempt to launch its first batch of Starlink satellites in more than a week. The planned flight comes following a fuel leak in a Falcon 9 booster caused its destruction shortly after landing.
High ground-level winds prevented the launch from moving forward on Monday and SpaceX didn’t begin fueling its Falcon 9 rocket on Tuesday after it successfully launched NASA’s SPHEREx and PUNCH missions at Vandenberg Space Force Base..
The launch of the Starlink 12-21 mission from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is now set for 10:20 p.m. EDT (0220 UTC).
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about an hour before liftoff.
On Tuesday, the 45th Weather Squadron, based at Patrick Space Force Base, forecast a greater than 95 percent chance of favorable weather at liftoff, citing no primary concerns. It did note that the upper-level wind shear and booster recovery weather may be watch items though.
“The storm system which brought the storms and winds to the Space Coast on Monday has since moved off the Atlantic coast, with gusty winds Tuesday morning steadily diminishing through the day and evening,” meteorologists wrote. “Nearly ideal local weather is expected for the primary launch attempt tonight with mostly clear skies and light winds.”
SpaceX will use the Falcon 9 first stage booster 1069 on this launch, which will fly for a 22nd time. Its previous missions include CRS-24, Eutelsat Hotbird 13F and 17 previous Starlink missions.
A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, it will target a landing on the droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.” If successful, it will be the 101st booster landing for ASOG and 333rd booster landing to date.
Among the 21 Starlink V2 Mini satellites on the Starlink 12-21 mission are 13 that feature Direct to Cell capabilities.
Overcoming obstacles
The mission is set to mark SpaceX’s first launch from Florida’s Coast since a fuel leak during the Starlink 12-20 mission on March 2 resulted in the loss of first stage booster, B1086, less than a minute after it touched down on the droneship, ‘Just Read the Instructions.’
In a post on X, Kiko Dontchev, the vice president of Launch for SpaceX, listed five buckets of information that touched on reasons for a lack of launches in the past week. He pointed to “historically bad” sea states on the West Coast, which slowed down both booster and fairing recoveries, and cited the bad weather as a reason for slower fairing refurbishment timelines.
He also said the issue with B1086 “gave us a chance to learn and improve the reliability of the entire fleet hence the stand down over the past week.”
“As much as we love launching rockets, nothing is more important than safety and reliability,” Dontchev wrote. “We have stood done multiple times simply to double and triple check the everything even if we could have flown that day. We put even more scrutiny on critical [government] and customer missions.”
His comments add to those from colleagues, like Bill Gerstenmaier and Julianna Sheiman, who described other issues with the Falcon 9 fleet during briefings with the press ahead of the launches of NASA missions to study the cosmos and send astronauts to the International Space Station. The launch of the SPHEREx and PUNCH missions, for instance, were stymied by issues encapsulating the payloads.
In clearing the Falcon 9 to launch the Crew-10 mission on Wednesday, NASA said it was comfortable with the current understanding of the B1086 fuel leak, even with the root cause remaining unresolved.
“Teams reviewed data from Sunday’s static fire of the Crew-10 booster’s first stage, inspected the booster’s engine bay, and conducted “sniff” checks without any indication of leaks,” NASA wrote in a blog post on Tuesday evening. “NASA leaders determined that while the root cause of the Starlink post-landing fire is still under review, there is sufficient evidence to provide clearance to proceed with the crewed launch.”
