Overview
- Liftoff from Cape Canaveral’s SLC-40 is scheduled Oct. 23 at 9:30 p.m. EDT within a four-hour window after a 24-hour slip, with the 45th Weather Squadron calling conditions better than 95% favorable.
- The Falcon 9 first stage will fly for the 21st time without landing legs or grid fins, with no recovery planned to meet the mission’s performance needs.
- SpainSat NG II, built by Airbus for Hisdesat, will be deployed to geosynchronous transfer orbit before maneuvering to geostationary orbit for a nominal 15-year service supporting Spain’s secure communications as well as EU Govsatcom and NATO, with partial funding of €74 million from Spain’s science ministry.
- A day earlier, SpaceX launched 28 Starlink v2-Mini satellites from Vandenberg on booster B1075’s 21st flight, which successfully landed on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You after deployment about an hour post-liftoff.
- That Starlink mission set a new single-year Falcon 9 launch record, and Thursday’s SpainSat NG II flight would be SpaceX’s 134th orbital launch of 2025, tying the company’s full-year 2024 total.