SpaceX launched its final mission of the year early this morning. Unshockingly to anyone, that was a batch of Starlink satellites. Tomorrow starts a whole new year of launching rockets, but how did SpaceX do in 2024? What sort of takeaways can we get for what we’ll see in 2025?
After tracking all of SpaceX’s launches over the year, here are the highlights.
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SpaceX is set to launch a Falcon 9 from SLC-4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on February 25, 2022, at 12:12 p.m. EST. This launch will carry a new batch of 50 Starlink satellites to polar orbit.
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Earlier this week SpaceX launched their first operational Starlink mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The mission featured the first droneship landing on the west coast since early 2019, which means the stunning booster returns to California have also returned.
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On Monday, SpaceX plans to launch their first operational batch of Starlink satellites from their launch complex out of Vandenberg Space Force Base. While the official name of this mission is Starlink 2-1 the launch will not carry the 2.0 variants we’ve been waiting for. Instead, these will be 1.5 version satellites and the 2 refers to the “group 2” of Starlink satellites.
This will be the first SpaceX launch from the west coast since Sentinel 6 in November 2020. This will also be the first full batch of Starlink satellites to launch into a polar orbit. Starlink 2-1 will host the first use of the droneship Of Course I Still Love you on the west coast.
Date: Monday, September 13th, 11:55 p.m. EDT
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After its month-long trip, Of Course I Still Love You arrived at Port Long Beach earlier this morning. The trip isn’t officially over yet, the droneship will still need to be unloaded from its carrier vessel named Mighty Servant 1.
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While this week has been devoid of launches, it was far from an uneventful week in space news. We’ve had spacewalks occurring at the ISS, the arrival of ULA’s Atlas V booster for CFT, and brand new exclusive updates on SpaceX’s newest droneship.
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We’ve been covering the construction on SpaceX’s news addition to the Eastern fleet, A Shortfall of Gravitas. ASOG will soon be taking the place of the droneship Of Course I Still Love You which is moving to the west coast.
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Over the last month, we’ve seen a lot of changes in SpaceX’s recovery fleet. New members to the fleet are being added, and some being moved around. Here is an update on what has happened recently.
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We’ve been talking recently about SpaceX’s newest droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas and that it will be replacing one of SpaceX’s droneships on the east coast. It has become pretty apparent now which droneship it will be replacing.
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