SpaceX Launches 40 More Internet Satellites Written 10 January 2023

Spaceflight Now reports that a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket “lifted off from Cape Canaveral Monday night with 40 more internet satellites for OneWeb, nudging the network closer to full operational capability.” The Falcon 9 booster “returned to Cape Canaveral for landing eight minutes later.” SpaceX delayed “the launch of a different Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California Monday night due to bad weather.” That mission was “supposed to launch just 35 minutes before the OneWeb mission from Cape Canaveral, but has now been rescheduled for liftoff Tuesday night.” The SpaceX launch team “working in a control center just outside the gate of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station began loading super-chilled, densified kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants into the Falcon 9 vehicle at T-minus 35 minutes.” Helium pressurant also “flowed into the rocket in the last half-hour of the countdown.” In the final “seven minutes before liftoff, the Falcon 9’s Merlin main engines were thermally conditioned for flight through a procedure known as ‘chilldown.’” The Falcon 9’s “guidance and range safety systems were also configured for launch.”
Full Story (Spaceflight Now)

 Video

SpaceX launches the OneWeb Launch 16 mission from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, Monday, January 9 at 11:50 p.m. ET.
(SpaceX; YouTube)