SpaceX launches Starlink mission while Axiom Space waits out weather
Tuesday morning's weather was nice enough on the Space Coast for one of two planned launches, but high winds in a potential abort site forced the human spaceflight plans of Axiom Space and SpaceX to push the Ax-4 mission from Kennedy Space Center to at least Wednesday.
The payload of 23 Starlink satellites on another SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, though, did not require as much caution, so a launch from neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Space Launch Complex 40 happened as planned lifting off at 9:05 a.m.
The first-stage booster for the mission made its 12th flight with a recovery landing downrange on the droneship Just Read the Instructions stationed in the Atlantic.
It was the 49th launch on the Space Coast this year with all but two coming from SpaceX.
Launch No. 50 could come Wednesday morning as the Ax-4 mission looks to send up its crew in a new Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 targeting liftoff from KSC's Launch Pad 39-A at 8 a.m. It would be the second flight of the mission's first-stage booster, which would return to Canaveral's Landing Zone 1, meaning a sonic boom could be heard on the Space Coast and parts of Central Florida.
Space Launch Delta 45's weather squadron forecasts an 80% chance for good conditions at the launch site, but the forecast continues to predict moderate to high winds along the launch corridor that includes areas needed in case of an emergency abort.
A backup to Thursday at 7:37 a.m. sees a better weather forecast for those downrange winds expected to have died down some, while chances at the launch site would be 75% for good conditions.
The Ax-4 mission is commanded by former NASA astronaut and now Axiom Space employee Peggy Whitson making what would be her fifth trip to space. She is leading three men whose seats were paid for by the governments of India and Hungary as well as Poland through its membership with the European Space Agency.
India's Shubhanshu Shukla is taking the role of pilot while Hungary's Tibor Kapu and Poland's Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski are mission specialists. None of those three countries have had national astronauts fly to space in more than four decades.
They plan to dock with the International Space Station one day after launch for about a two-week stay during which the quartet will work on about 60 science investigations representing 31 different countries. More than two dozen of those will be sponsored by the ISS National Laboratory.
This would be the third human spaceflight from the Space Coast in 2023 following SpaceX's Crew-10 mission and the private polar orbital Fram2 mission.
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