SpaceX is preparing to launch its latest batch of Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base late Friday morning. It comes as the U.S. Space Force’s Assured Access to Space (AATS) works to ensure resiliency from one of two primary spaceports that’s seeing far more orbital launches than it has historically experienced.
Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket on the Starlink 11-2 mission from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) is set for 11:28 a.m. PST (2:28 p.m. EST, 1928 UTC). This will be the 87th Starlink launch so far this year.
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage of the mission beginning about 30 minutes prior to liftoff.
The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, tail number B1082 in the SpaceX fleet, will be making its ninth trip to space. It previously launched USSF-62, OneWeb Launch 20 and six previous Starlink missions.
A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, it is set to touch down on the SpaceX droneship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You.’ If successful, this will mark the 113th booster landing for OCISLY and the 382nd booster landing to date.
Shoring up launch capability
The upcoming Falcon 9 launch comes on the heels of the conclusion of the Space Force Association’s second annual Spacepower Conference in Orlando, Florida. The gathering of Guardians, contractors and academics covered a range of topics from preparing to combat current and future threats to on-orbit assets to various acquisition strategies for desired space-related capabilities.
Among the panels throughout the three days was a keynote address from Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, the Program Executive Officer (PEO) for Assured Access to Space (AATS) for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC). She also serves as the Commander of Space Launch Delta (SLD) 45, the Director of the Eastern Range and the Director of Launch and Range Operations for SSC.
Speaking to the convention on Thursday in her AATS PEO role, Panzenhagen said that so far this year, the Space Force has supported 136 mission between Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg.
“Just to give you an idea of the pace that we’re launching at, with today being December 12, we’ll probably have at least eight more launches before the end of this calendar year,” Panzenhagen said. “Now let’s compare. Globally, in that same time period, calendar year 2024, there’s been about 230 launches. So, the Space Force is providing launch capacity at its spaceports for about 60 percent of the global missions.
“So, most of the launches in the world are happening in at the Space Force’s spaceports and about 40 percent of the global missions are just from the Eastern Range, which is amazing.”
Panzenhagen said that as part of the organization’s “spaceport of the future” work, it has about $1.3 billion to use from FY2024 through FY2028 to upgrade launch infrastructure at both the Eastern Range and the Western Range.
She said in order to support boosting launch capacity and increasing resilience at their spaceports, AATS is working to “eliminate critical days.”
“For us, ‘critical days’ are days when you’re doing something maintenance-wise that puts too much risk to be able to do a launch mission. So, like you’re digging and could potentially cut fiber or something like that,” Panzenhagen explained. “We’re working on eliminating those.”
She said other steps are being taken, like burying power lines, increasing reliable access to water for things like deluge systems, expanding roadways to detract from traffic backups related to moving launch hardware and more. Panzenhagen said they have 192 such infrastructure projects over those named fiscal years and so far, they are on track.
