SpaceX blasts off on 35th Space Coast launch of the year

SpaceX keeps lining them up and knocking them out with an afternoon launch from Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying another 23 of the company’s Starlink internet satellites lifted off at 2:42 p.m. Eastern time from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A.

It’s the second launch this week after a Starlink launch midday Monday from nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

It marks the third launch of the first-stage booster, which previously flew on the Crew-8 human spaceflight and one Starlink mission. It managed another recovery landing downrange in the Atlantic Ocean on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas.

This marks the 35th launch from the Space Coast with all but two coming from SpaceX.

United Launch Alliance had the other two launches and is awaiting its third with the Crew Flight Test mission to send up astronauts on board Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner atop an Atlas V. Teams scrubbed that launch attempt on Monday night because of a valve issue on the Atlas V’s upper Centaur stage.

Teams decided to roll the Atlas V back to ULA’s Vertical Integration Facility to replace the valve and now that launch is targeting no earlier than May 17.

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