SpaceX to try for New Record Sunday

Stop me if you've heard this before, but SpaceX is looking to set another record tomorrow (Sunday) evening.  Since pretty much every launch is a new record for consecutive flights, I need to add the record will be flying booster 1049 for its 16th mission.  As far as I can tell from my previous posts, B1049 is their fleet leader that first flew back on the Crew-2 demo flight that flew Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS.  That was SpaceX's first manned flight.  There is one other booster that made it to 15 flights, and a few that have launched 14 times, but this is the first attempt to go for a 16th flight.  Considering they had a goal of 10 flights, it might be they inspected the boosters as completely as they can and said, "let's go for 20."

The mission is to lift another group of Starlink satellites into orbit.  In the progression of Starlink missions we see various numbers of satellites, depending on which version of the Starlink satellites are being lifted.  This mission is carrying 22 and by that number we know they're not the same hardware as when the number is 52. 

The 22 satellites are apparently "V2 Minis," a newer and more powerful version of SpaceX's broadband craft. They're actually bigger than the previous Starlink iteration, about 50 of which can fit on a Falcon 9. But they're "mini" compared to the final V2 satellites, 1.25-ton (1.1 metric tons) spacecraft that will launch aboard SpaceX's giant, next-gen Starship vehicle.

"V2 minis include key technologies — such as more powerful phased array antennas and the use of E-band for backhaul — which will allow Starlink to provide ~4x more capacity per satellite than earlier iterations," SpaceX said via Twitter in February.

Also back in February, I added this explanation:  E-band is an imprecise designation; it covers 60 to 90 GHz.  Atmospheric attenuation (loss of signal strength) is worst at 60 GHz and drops quite a bit by 80 GHz (see chart here, for example), which ordinarily means it's a good frequency band to use for satellite-to-satellite in space (what they mean by backhaul), not so much for downlink to the ground.  That also means it's much harder for someone on the ground to intercept that E-band link.  There's lots more information on the V2 Minis in that February post link.  

For the last several days, Next Spaceflight has listed the launch time in the early morning; the Space.com link has that at 4:36 a.m. ET (0836 GMT).  While looking up a link for live coverage of the launch, I was rather surprised to see it has been moved to 8:36 p.m. ET (0036 UTC on July 10).  The video link can be accessed at SpaceX's missions page here, via SpaceX's channel on YouTube, or embedded at Space.com.  

A night launch of a Falcon 9.  It's from Vandenberg SFB, not CCSFS but it's a pretty picture. SpaceX photo.