Update Jan. 8, 9:36 a.m. EST (1436 UTC): SpaceX scrubbed the launch attempt on Thursday; targeting Friday, Jan. 9.
SpaceX scrubbed its planned early afternoon Falcon 9 launch on Thursday without citing a reason for the slip. The flight will deliver a new batch of its Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station when it does fly.
While an explanation for the delay to the Starlink 6-96 mission wasn’t publicly announced, the payload fairing with the 29 Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites inside was later than usual in arriving to the pad at Space Launch Complex 40.
SpaceX is targeting its next opportunity for a flight from Space Launch Complex 40 on Friday, Jan. 9, at 1:05 p.m. EST (1805 UTC). The Falcon 9 rocket will fly on a south-easterly trajectory upon leaving the pad.
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about an hour prior to liftoff.
Meteorologists with the 45th Weather Squadron forecast a greater than 95 percent chance for favorable weather at liftoff on Thursday. Launch weather officers said there may be some off-shore rain showers, but they shouldn’t impact conditions at the pad.
SpaceX will launch the mission using the Falcon 9 booster with the tail number 1069. This will be its 29th flight after launching missions, like CRS-24, Eutelsat Hotbird 13F and 24 batches of Starlink satellites.
Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1069 will target a landing on the drone ship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas,’ positioned in the Atlantic Ocean to the east of The Bahamas. If successful, this will be the 138th landing on this vessel and the 556th booster landing for SpaceX to date.
According to astronomer and expert orbital tracker Jonathan McDowell, there were more than 9,400 Starlink satellites in orbit as of Jan. 5.