Falcon 9 B1077-4 is being prepared to launch 56 Starlink v1.5 satellites into low Earth orbit on Wednesday, March 29 at 4:01 PM EDT (20:01 UTC), from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The Falcon 9 will be flying on a southeast trajectory, as is usual during winter months to avoid recovery operations in rough seas to the northeast. The trajectory will take the batch of Starlink satellites to an initial 299 by 339 km orbit inclined 43 degrees, with the deployment of the spacecraft scheduled to occur one hour and five minutes after liftoff. While the second stage pushes the Starlink batch into orbit, the B1077 first stage will land 660 kilometers downrange on Just Read the Instructions (JRTI) in the Caribbean, near the Bahamas. If all goes as planned, this will be the 182nd successful landing out of 193 attempts, counting drone ship and return to launch site landings. B1077 has previously flown the Crew-5, GPS III-SV06, and Inmarsat I-6 F2 missions, and has also landed on JRTI twice before. The recovery ship Bob is also downrange and is tasked with recovering the fairings from this flight. The fairings, equipped with parachutes for a soft splashdown in…
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Starlink Group 5-10 prepares for launch, pending weather
