SpaceX Eyes Launching Transporter 2 Via Falcon 9 Rocket Soon

SpaceX will launch another mission via Falcon 9 this week. The Transporter-2 mission, which will launch a slew of satellites, is due to launch on June 25, following the company's record-breaking 143-satellite Transporter-1 mission in 2020.

The launch window will be open from 2:56 p.m. to 3:54 p.m. ET.

According to Space Coast Daily, the Transporter 2 mission is a rideshare trip to a sun-synchronous orbit with a slew of small microsatellites and nanosatellites for commercial and government customers.

Falcon 9's Fury

The Falcon 9 is SpaceX's workhorse rocket, standing 227 feet tall (70 meters) and producing more than 1.5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, Space.com explained.

The ESA allowed SpaceX permission to fly its payloads on refurbished rockets last year. That decision came after another recent declaration allowing SpaceX to retrieve the rocket's first stage during national security missions, previously prohibited.

The next two GPS missions, which were supposed to launch on SpaceX rockets next year, will now be launched on refurbished rockets.

All of this is excellent news for SpaceX, which has been relying largely on its fleet of experienced rockets, with many Falcon 9 first stages having flown five or more times.

Only one mission has used a completely new Falcon 9 this year, with the rest relying on flight-proven boosters.

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Falcon 9's Mission

SpaceX already recorded Falcon 9's 122nd launch and the company's 19th in 2021. It's also the 89th time a booster has been successfully recovered. The "Just Read the Instructions" drone ship from SpaceX was positioned in the Atlantic Ocean, awaiting the recovery effort.

The "Of Course I Still Love You," the company's other drone ship, is on its way to the West Coast. Last Monday, the huge ship set sail from Port Canaveral on a journey through the Panama Canal. It will eventually dock in the Los Angeles port and begin SpaceX's West Coast recovery operations.

"A Shortfall of Gravitas," a third drone ship, is nearly finished and will be traveling to Port Canaveral to assist SpaceX with their speedy launch and recovery rate.

The booster B1062, which is the first Falcon 9 launcher to transport two distinct GPS satellites into orbit, was the star of the show today. It's also the first time a Falcon 9 has been utilized to launch one of these sophisticated GPS satellites.

Falcon 9's Fairing Recovery

The protective casing that houses the payload is the rocket's nose cone (or payload fairing). When the rocket reaches a particular altitude, it deploys. The hardware has traditionally been discarded, never to be used again.

SpaceX has sought to recover and fly Falcon 9 fairing halves in recent years as part of its reusability efforts. Each fairing half costs an estimated $3 million, ProVsCons said. Parachutes are used to slow the fairings' descent so that they can be retrieved from the ocean.

In order to collect those fairings from the ocean, SpaceX has been shuffled around recovery vessels and even hired some temporary labor. The fairing recovery craft for today's launch has arrived in Florida for the first time. Hos Briarwood, a black and orange boat, will use its onboard crane to lift the fairings out of the water. They could be able to fly again soon if they're in good shape.