SpaceX to begin 2021 launch campaign on Thursday evening

SpaceX will look to launch what promises to be a busy year of launches on Thursday night, when a Falcon 9 rocket is due to launch the Turksat 5A communications satellite. The 3.4 tonne satellite will be deployed in a geostationary transfer orbit.

The launch will take place from Space Launch Complex 40 at Space Force Station at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The mission has a four-hour launch window that opens at 8:28 PM ET (1:28 AM UTC Friday), with a save opportunity a day later. The weather forecast is generally favorable, with a 70 percent chance that conditions will “go away” on Thursday.

The mission will use material previously used for the first stage of the rocket, as well as for the payload fairing. This will be the fourth flight of this core booster, which previously launched a GPS III satellite for the US Space Force in June 2020 as well as two Starlink missions for SpaceX, most recently on October 24. Each half of the payload fairings in this mission also completed a previous mission.

This launch continues SpaceX’s trend of using increasingly experienced first-stage rockets for trade missions. In December, for example, the company flew a communications satellite for Sirius on the seventh first-stage flight.

In an interview, SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell told Ars that customers are confident in “flight proven” rockets and that it is generally up to SpaceX to determine the best rocket for each mission. “You buy a launch service, and we’ll get you the best vehicle possible within the timeframe you need to fly,” she told customers. “And we basically put control in our hands.”

It is not known how many Falcon 9 SpaceX rockets will launch in 2021, but barring a disaster, that number will be high. In the midst of the pandemic in 2020, SpaceX managed to set a record for total launches, with 26. The company will likely eclipse that with multiple missions each for NASA, the Department of Defense, and commercial clients in addition to its own plans. to develop its Starlink Internet constellation and provide services to more US households and businesses.

The Turksat 5A mission will be webcast, with the stream below starting approximately 15 minutes before takeoff.