Busy launch schedule for SpaceX
April 21, 2022
By Chris Forrester
The routine launch of a SpaceX rocket on April 17th from Vandenberg Space Force Base (and a flawless landing for the booster back at the air force base) in California kicked of an intense period of activity for the Elon Musk-owned business.
Today (April 21st) should see another batch of 53 Starlink satellites launched from Cape Canaveral, at 11.14 Florida time (15.14 pm UTC) subject to the usual weather conditions. Officially dubbed Flight 4-14 it will be the 150th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket.
Indeed, Musk, via Twitter, said that his SpaceX team are now working to a 5-day launch cadence and helped by many performance and refurbishing improvements to the Falcon 9.
On April 23rd there’s a Crew Dragon passenger flight scheduled to the International Space Station with the launch from Kennedy Space Center.
As for SpaceX’s May schedule, some specific dates and details are a little hazy at the moment, but in the manifest are two flights for SES and its next batches of O3b MEO mPower satellites (six satellites in total). This is likely to be followed by the launch of NileSat 301, also from Florida.
May should also see a further two Starlink flight 4-13 carrying batches of Low Earth orbit satellites.