After a series of weather delays and last-minute countdown cancellations, SpaceX aims to launch its Falcon Heavy ViaSat-3 mission tonight at 7:29 p.m. ET. The launch had 57 minutes which they may need to take advantage of due to strong onshore winds following the front across the Florida Peninsula early this morning.
Falcon Heavy after experiencing several violent thunderstorms (Richard Angle)
Tonight’s mission was supposed to take off for the first time on Thursday, April 27. However, this was ultimately caused by bad weather over the Kennedy Space Center, including a lightning strike from the turret on LC-39A. Then SpaceX attempted another launch on Friday, April 28, only to cancel the countdown to T-58 seconds for reasons yet unknown.
Weather will then play another factor for Saturday’s April 29 effort, which SpaceX is skipping due to another intense storm system over much of Florida.
Barring tonight’s spoilers, this will be the sixth launch of the Falcon Heavy and the first time it has taken off in fully expendable form. Currently, the 45th Space Weather Squadron predicts an 80% chance of acceptable weather during the launch period. This will be SpaceX’s 28th overall launch so far this year, maintaining an impressive launch cadence. SpaceX plans to launch the Falcon Heavy up to 3 more times with USSF 52, Echostar 24, and NASA’s PSYCHE mission pending.
Falcon Heavy di LC-39A (Richard Angle)
Questions or comments? Shoot me an email at @[email protected]or send me a tweet @employee.
“Evil thinker. Bachelor of music. Hipster-friendly communicator. Bacon freak. Amateur internet enthusiast. introverts.”
2023-04-30 20:46:11
#SpaceX #aims #launch #Falcon #Heavy #tonight #delays
