SpaceX launched another set of 60 satellites for their Starlink internet constellation on Monday, February 15 at 22:59 EST (Tuesday, February 16 at 03:59 UTC) from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The payload was successfully deployed into low Earth orbit; however, the first stage B1059 booster was lost during its landing attempt.
The Starlink v1.0 L19 mission delivered its payloads into the initial shell of the constellation in a 53 degree inclination orbit.
This was the sixth flight of Falcon 9 booster 1059. This first stage entered service in December 2019 with the launch of the CRS-19 mission. It subsequently launched CRS-20, a Starlink rideshare mission, SAOCOM-1B, and most recently NROL-108 on December 19, 2020.
The launch vehicle completed a static fire test early Saturday afternoon in preparation for what would ultimately prove to be its final launch.
The mission used a flight profile that included a brief second firing of the second stage engine about 45 minutes after liftoff, with the satellites released into an approximately 250 x 280 kilometer orbit just over one hour into the flight.
After lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, the Falcon 9 rocket flew to the northeast over the Atlantic Ocean. The autonomous spaceport drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) was waiting about 600 kilometers downrange to catch the booster after it completed its mission. That landing did not come to pass after the booster encountered an issue during or at the end of the landing burn, per what was seen on SpaceX’s webcast.
Meanwhile, in Port Canaveral. Ms. Tree was practicing scooping out fairings from the water (using the dock) before getting photobombed by USNS Newport.
Just your average Thursday.
Edited clips (rewind below for the whole show).
➡️https://t.co/lzdAJXnIy6 pic.twitter.com/3LE2OLQxK8
— Chris Bergin – NSF (@NASASpaceflight) February 11, 2021
OCISLY was towed by Hawk for this mission and was joined by support ship GO Quest and fairing retrieval vessels GO Ms. Tree and GO Ms. Chief.
Prior to departing Port Canaveral to support the launch, the crew of GO Ms. Tree was spotted conducting practice runs with the net used to scoop fairings from the water.
This was be the second of four planned Starlink launches in February, as SpaceX takes advantage of a lull in missions for external customers to ramp up the deployment of their internet constellation.
However, that manifest is now in question as SpaceX works to clear other first stage boosters for flight following the landing anomaly suffered by B1059 on this mission.
The next mission, as of 05:00 UTC February 16, is the oft-delayed Starlink v1.0 L17 mission, originally planned for late-January but now targeting the early morning hours of February 17 — though this is likely to slip based on the L19 booster issue.
For the near future, SpaceX can continue launching Starlink flights as fast as they can refurbish boosters for flight, with the next known mission for an outside customer being the Crew-2 launch to the International Space Station targeting no earlier than April 20.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has begun taking deposits to make reservations for Starlink service as it becomes available. The $99 deposits give the holders priority as the number of users served in a particular area is limited, and the refundable deposits will be applied to the order price when service is initiated. This is not limited to the United States. Prospective customers can check starlink.com for details.
Starlink satellites raising to their operational orbit. Image by Ben Craddock for NASASpaceflight.
This launch will bring the number of operational satellites in the initial 53 degree inclination, 550 kilometer altitude orbital shell to around 1,050 of the eventual 1,584 total.
The first 36 planes are nearly in place and some of the remaining 36 planes have begun to fill in. SpaceX has also launched 10 satellites into a 97.6 degree orbit to begin testing operations at the higher orbital inclinations needed to serve customers at high latitudes.
SpaceX gave some hints on their intended service timelines in a filing with Australia’s Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories, reported earlier by ZDNet.
In the filing, SpaceX mentioned being able to serve much of Australia in early 2021, with service to lower latitude islands near the northern coast in early 2022, using ground stations on the Australian mainland, and service to more distant and higher latitude islands near the end of 2022 as more satellites with inter-satellite links are launched into polar orbits.
Since early-December 2020, SpaceX has been altering the spacing of the satellites already on orbit. It appears the company is arranging many of the planes to have 18 active satellites instead of 20, which would fill some small gaps and free up some satellites to act as spares.
This may allow them to provide more consistent service as they continue to build out the constellation.
The following video shows the positions of the individual satellites within their orbital planes over the last three months.
As they look to move beyond the initial shell of the constellation, SpaceX will need a resolution to the modification they filed with the FCC in April 2020.
SpaceX requested to lower the rest of the 4,400 satellites orbits below 600 km from their approved heights of over 1,100 km, lower the minimum elevation above the horizon that user terminals are allowed to communicate with the satellites, and adjust the transmission power lower to match the change in altitude.
In early-February 2021, SpaceX, through the government of Norway, also filed the requested modifications with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
Changing the elevation angle for communicating with most of the satellites to 25 degrees would make each satellite’s ground coverage area similar to what they would have been at higher altitudes with a 40 degree elevation.
This change has received opposition from other satellite providers as the requested angles of elevation can affect interference between systems as well as different systems that may need to split the available bandwidth.
Table of satellite coverage areas from ITU filing for modified Starlink constellation.
Other objections focusing on the increasing congestion in certain orbits and the possibility of generating debris from collisions has also been raised.
Many competitors argue that the changes to the constellation are large enough that it should be considered a new filing and moved to a later FCC processing round, which would give Starlink lower priority when the need arises to coordinate between systems.
Currently, Starlink is on equal footing with OneWeb and Telesat when operating in the United States; however, the latter two have earlier filing dates with the ITU. If changed to the date of the latest modification, Starlink would be in the same round as Amazon’s Kuiper in the United States.
While the proceedings for the constellation modifications work toward their conclusions, some other SpaceX licenses have been approved recently. Over the last few days, 13 of the Ka-band Starlink gateways in 9 states were granted their licenses, bringing the total to 18 licensed locations in the United States. There are still another 26 operating under Special Temporary Authority (STA) permits. SpaceX also received authorization for Starlink landing rights in Nigeria, as reported by Steve Song.
However the government authorizations and deployment altitudes work out, it will be a busy year for Starlink as they continue to rapidly deploy their satellites and initiate service in many countries.
Lead photo: Falcon 9 B1059 launches the Starlink v1.0 L8 mission. Credit: Julia Bergeron