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SpaceX completes pair of Space Coast launches just over 4 hours apart

Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel on

Published in Science & Technology News

ORLANDO, Fla. — SpaceX knocked out a pair of launches from its two pads on the Space Coast on Monday in just over four hours.

First up was a Falcon 9 on the Koreasat-6A from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-A at 12:22 p.m. The second was a Starlink launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 4:28 p.m. liftoff, a difference of four hours and six minutes.

The two pads at the adjacent spaceports operated by SpaceX are 3 1/2 miles apart.

The first launch’s payload was a communications satellite for South Korean company KT SAT Corporation Ltd. deployed on a geosynchronous transfer orbit.

This was the 23rd mission for the first-stage booster, which made a record recovery return to nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Landing Zone 1.

It became the first SpaceX booster to successfully make 23 landings, although two previous boosters launched 23 times. One of those blew up on its landing attempt while another was purposefully expended to get its payload to a higher orbital insertion.

The second launch of the day, the Starlink 6-69 mission with 24 of SpaceX’s internet satellites, had been scrubbed from a Sunday attempt because of poor weather in the booster recovery area.

But the weather was clear Monday, and its first-stage booster made its 12th flight with another recovery landing downrange in the Atlantic on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas.

 

These were the 77th and 78th launches from the Space Coast in 2024, with all but five coming from SpaceX.

The time between the two Space Coast launches did not best SpaceX’s company record between its KSC and Canaveral pads, which was set Dec. 28, 2023 when a Falcon Heavy launch from KSC was followed by a Falcon 9 at Cape Canaveral in 2 hours and 54 minutes.

Even that has not beaten the all-time record on the Space Coast for shortest times between launches, which came during four Gemini program missions that flew in 1966. Those featured double launches from two different pads on what was then Cape Kennedy.

Those would send crew up in the Gemini capsule on Titan rockets about 100 minutes after Atlas boosters had sent up Agena Target Vehicles with which they would rendezvous in space.

The record remains the two launches from Gemini 11, which sent up astronauts Pete Conrad and Richard Gordon from Launch Complex 19 only 97 minutes and 25 seconds after the Agena launch from Launch Complex 14 just over 1 mile to the south.

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©2024 Orlando Sentinel. Visit at orlandosentinel.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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