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SpaceX targets March 3 for next Starlink launch

March 1, 2022

By Chris Forrester

SpaceX, just days after launching 60 Starlink satellites from California, has scheduled the launch of about 50 satellites on March 3rd from Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX has a third Starlink flight planned for next week on March 8th, also from Florida.

These two flights, plus two previous launches earlier in February (3rd and 21st), will mean that Elon Musk’s team at SpaceX will have launched around 240 of its Starlink satellites into orbit. Unfortunately, around 40 of that total were lost following the February 3rd launch due to a geomagnetic storm in the high Earth’s atmosphere.

SpaceX is also due to launch a trip of O3b mPOWER satellites later in March, but overall this year SpaceX will reportedly handle around 38 launches overall.

Inmarsat also confirmed that SpaceX will launch its latest Inmarsat series 6 craft (I-6 F2) in Q1 of 2023. The launch follows the first satellite of the series, the I-6 F1, which was launched by Japan’s Heavy Mitsubishi Heavy Industries back in December 2021. I-6 F2 is identical to its predecessor, with both being Inmarsat’s first dual band satellites carrying ELERA (L-band) and Global Express (GX – Ka-band) payloads.

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