SpaceX pushes launch with 2nd batch of competitor’s satellites to Monday

SpaceX is set for its second Space Coast launch of the year mission to send up more internet satellites for competitor OneWeb.

Liftoff of a Falcon 9 was pushed to 11:50 p.m. Monday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40. A Sunday attempt was tabled so SpaceX could “complete prelaunch processing,” the company posted on its Twitter account, but that both “vehicle and spacecraft are healthy.”

Space Launch Delta 45′s weather squadron predicts better than 90% chance for good conditions.

The first-stage booster is flying for the second time and SpaceX will attempt recovery at Canaveral’s Landing Zone 1 south of the launch site.

It was set to be the company’s 200th launch since 2010, but may end up being the 201st with the delay as a Starlink launch is also on tap for Monday night, but from California.

Nearly half of SpaceX’s launches have come in just the last two years with 31 launches in 2021 and 61 in 2022. Elon Musk has said the company could come close to 100 launches in 2023. The first Falcon 9 launch came on June 4, 2010 and has since flown 194 more times while Falcon Heavy has flown four times.

The company has also recovered 160 of its first-stage boosters from those flights, reusing them on 134 times.

This is the second batch of British company OneWeb satellites being launched by SpaceX, which has its own internet constellation Starlink. Subsidiary OneWeb Satellites actually builds the satellites in partnership with Airbus at a facility in Brevard County that opened in 2019.

OneWeb shifted plans in 2022 to get launch assists from both SpaceX and India’s space agency after a contract to launch on Russian rockets was put into disarray following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

This launch marks the 16th OneWeb launch to date with 40 more low-latency broadband communication satellites as part of the company’s plans for an array of 648 in orbit. SpaceX’s last launch in early December also flew up 40 to orbit bringing OneWeb’s total to 502.

In comparison, SpaceX has already sent up more than 3,600 of its Starlink satellites part of license allowing it up to 7.500. Amazon has its own internet constellation planned as well called Project Kuiper that looks to send up 3,236 satellites by 2029.

OneWeb’s constellation is already active in Alaska, Canada, the United Kingdom, Greenland and the wider Arctic area. The latest batch allows connectivity to increase for all points north of the 35th parallel, which runs around the globe crossing through the middle of the United States.

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