Falcon 9 Lauches First Starlink Satellites to Third Shell!

Article Written by Josh G for Onkla

On Sunday, July 10, 2022 at 9:39pm Eastern Daylight Time, the Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East at the Vandenberg Space Force Station, which is located near the city of Lompoc, California. The vehicle has a clean ascent prior to shutting down the nine first stage Merlin 1D engines. The stage successfully separated, and the second stage Merlin vacuum engine ignited. The second stage continued to propel all 46 Starlink satellites into a Sun-Synchronous orbit. The fairing halves successfully separated and touched down softly in the Pacific ocean off the coast of California. The booster successfully ignited three of its nine engines for the entry burn, and lit the single engine landing burn the bring the booster slowly down onto the deck of SpaceX's autonomous spaceport droneship, Of Course I Still Love You.

Falcon 9 Launches From Vandenberg SFS : Photo: Jack Beyer for NASASpaceFlight

This mission marked the 50th overall Starlink mission, and the first launch of Starlink satellites to the third shell. This shell orbits at 97.6 degrees inclination, and can only be launched from the Vandenberg Space Force Station, as that has the only allowed trajectory path for it to follow. The reason that there are also only 46 satellites instead of the usual 52 to 60 satellites is that this orbit requires more performance, so they need to reduce the payload mass for the Falcon 9 rocket to reach the intended orbit.

The booster that flew on this mission was B1063 which is a booster that had launched from both spaceports. Five launches from Vandenberg and a single launch from Florida. The first launch that it supported was the Sentinel 6A Michael Freilich mission which launched from Vandenberg SFS. Then it supported Starlink L28 which launched from Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral SFS. Then it supported the DART mission or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test which is currently on its way to Dimporphos for its impact test. Currently slated to impact in September of this year. Then it supported three more Starlink missions. Starlink 4-11, Starlink 4-13, and now Starlink 3-1.

Mission Milestones

- 6th Flight for B1063

- 53rd Orbital Launch for 2022

- 162nd Mission for SpaceX

- 19th SpaceX Mission for 2022

- 156th Successful Mission for SpaceX

- 128th Consecutive Successful Mission for SpaceX

- 154th Falcon 9 Mission

- 19th Falcon 9 Flight of 2022

- 151st Successful Falcon 9 Mission

- 125th Consecutive Successful Falcon 9 Mission

Do You Think Starlink Will Be Successful?

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• No