SpaceX sets up for the first Falcon 9 launch of 2021 on Thursday

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After a few days of delays, SpaceX seems to have settled in Thursday, January 7 for the first of several dozen Falcon 9 launches scheduled for 2021.

Originally slated for launch on Jan.4, SpaceX’s Turksat 5A communications satellite launch was “set to be determined due to mission assurance” on Jan.1 – an unfortunate catch-all euphemism often used by launch providers instead of any real explanation for delays. Regardless, Next Spaceflight reports that Turksat 5A will be the fourth launch of the Falcon 9 B1060, a milestone that the first (booster) stage reached just six months after its first flight.

Despite the slight delay, SpaceX’s current target of four launches this month is still within reach, although the slide illustrates the uphill battle the company will face as it aims to achieve the CEO Elon Musk’s goal of 48 spear in 2021. The weather is currently 60% favorable for SpaceX’s first launch of the year and Turksat 5A is scheduled to take off no earlier than 8:28 PM EST on January 7 (1:28 AM UTC, January 8).

Sadly, SpaceX’s first launch of the New Year was steeped in unprecedented controversy for the company, including the first-ever case of mass protests at its plant and headquarters in Hawthorne, California. The reason: Turksat 5A, although partially intended for civilian communications, will also support the Turkish military, which backed Azerbaijan after the country – without provocation – reignited a long-simmering conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in September 2020.

Arising from the events that have occurred over the past few centuries, the Armenian-Azeri conflict and Turkey’s involvement are extremely complex and messy. In the 1910s and 1920s, Turkey (then the Ottoman Empire) committed infamous atrocities against the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek communities of its occupied territory in a process of “Turkification”, systematically killing 1 to 3 million people in which would ultimately be qualified as genocide. . In a separate but related conflict, Turkey ultimately chose to back Azerbaijan’s claim to ethnically (75-90%) and historically Armenian territory, backing the country against Armenia in the first Nagorno-Karabakh war. in the 1990s.

Azerbaijan reignited the conflict in 2020, resulting in the deaths of at least 6,000 combatants and civilians on both sides and ultimately securing a substantial part of Nagorno-Karabakh territory as part of a ceasefire agreement -the fire of November 2020. To some extent, the borders of Nagorno-Karabakh are now more or less returned to their pre-war condition of the 1990s. Although preventable loss of life is inherently Deplorable, it is extremely difficult to say whether Azerbaijan was justified, but that and Turkey’s history of systematic and discriminatory hostility towards Armenians hardly leaves the benefit of the doubt to be given.

Ultimately, this cloud of ambiguity makes it difficult to directly blame SpaceX for choosing to launch Turksat 5A or its contracts to launch Turksat 5B and future domestically-built satellites. Moreover, if SpaceX should being criticized for voluntarily launching the satellite, Airbus – hired by Turkey to build Turksat 5A – is at least as worthy of criticism but has not yet been included in the protest speech despite the fact that the production contract of Turkey was publicly announced in 2017.

In the history of spaceflight, a satellite that is completed but never launches is virtually unknown, as the bureaucratic and financial inertia inherent in a launch campaign within months of its scheduled takeoff is obviously immense. Even if SpaceX accepted major financial penalties and pulled out of its contract, Arianespace, Roscosmos or ULA would certainly accept any replacement contract.

For protesters still determined to make an impact, the smart move would be to redirect attention to future Turkish satellite projects such as Turksat 5B, 6A and beyond with the intention of killing contracts in the Cradle – a goal much more tenable.

Stay tuned for more launch details as SpaceX nears its first mission of 2021.



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