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martyb [soylentnews.org] writes:

In launching its next batch of Starlink satellites—the company's sixth batch of 60 operational spacecraft—SpaceX plans to continue to push the bounds of reuse. With this mission, for the first time, the company plans to fly the same Falcon 9 first stage for the fifth time.

After completing a static fire test of its Falcon 9 rocket's first stage on Friday, the company is now targeting Sunday at 9:22am ET (13:22 UTC) for the mission from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. The weather is expected to be favorable, with only a 10 percent chance of poor conditions due to too many cumulus clouds.

SpaceX also announced [twitter.com] on Friday that it will reuse the rocket's payload fairing, which previously flew on a Starlink mission in May 2019. This means that the only part of the Falcon 9 rocket not being recycled is its second stage, which is powered by a single Merlin vacuum engine and pushes the satellites from the edge of space to their deployment into an orbit more than 200km above the ground.

[...]For Sunday's launch attempt, SpaceX will attempt to recover this first stage on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. It will also attempt to retrieve the fairing halves. This will be the sixth launch of the year for SpaceX.

According to SpaceFlighNow's launch schedule [spaceflightnow.com]:

Launch time: 1322 GMT (9:22 a.m. EDT)
Launch site: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is expected to launch the sixth batch of approximately 60 satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network, a mission designated Starlink 5.

The launch will be live-streamed on YouTube [youtube.com]; the feed usually starts about 20 minutes before launch time.

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