SpaceX is preparing to send a batch of 27 Starlink V2 Mini satellites into low Earth orbit. This flight ties the record for the most number of these types of satellites launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California to date.
The Starlink 11-7 mission is targeting a liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East is scheduled for 3:11 p.m. PDT (6:11 p.m. EDT, 2211 UTC). This will be the 11th orbital launch from VSFB 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 B1063 in the SpaceX fleet, will launch for a 24th time. This will make it the second most flown booster, following B1067, which has safely launched and landed 26 times.
The previous missions launched by B1063 include three missions for the National Reconnaissance Office, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft an 15 other Starlink missions. A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1063 will target a landing on the droneship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You.’
SpaceX aims to certify its boosters and payload fairings for up to 40 flights each.
The number of Starlink V2 Mini satellites on board the Starlink 11-7 mission suggest that some or all of these are what SpaceX calls its Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites in a progress report published at the end of 2024.
The report stated that these satellites include a Doppio Dualband antenna along with “upgraded avionics, propulsion, and power systems, and are mass optimized for Falcon 9 to allow up to 29 satellites to launch on each mission – six more satellites per launch than the original V2 Mini design.”
The Starlink 11-8 mission in mid-January may have had the first number of the Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites onboard, though this wasn’t specified by SpaceX. This was, however, the first time SpaceX launched a batch of 27 Starlink V2 Mini satellites from either California or Florida.
Starlink 11-7 will be just the second time that SpaceX has 27 of these satellites onboard a single Falcon 9 rocket launch. Both launches took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base.
