{"id":57821,"date":"2025-08-10T21:59:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T21:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/57821\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T21:59:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T21:59:08","slug":"bad-weather-for-falcon-9-booster-recovery-prevents-launch-of-amazons-project-kuiper-satellites-spaceflight-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/57821\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad weather for Falcon 9 booster recovery prevents launch of Amazon\u2019s Project Kuiper satellites \u2013 Spaceflight Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Poor weather in the booster recovery zone caused a scrub of the KF-02 mission, preventing the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for a fourth time in as many days. Image: SpaceX via livestream<\/p>\n

Update Aug. 10, 9:30 a.m. EDT: Poor weather in the booster recovery zone scrubs KF-02 launch; now targeting Monday, Aug. 11.<\/p>\n

For a fourth time in as many days, SpaceX was unable to launch 24 satellites for Amazon\u2019s Project Kuiper internet service from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.<\/p>\n

Technical issues with the Falcon 9 rocket prevented launches on Thursday and Friday and poor weather stymied launch attempts on Saturday and Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust want to make everyone aware that we have no-go conditions on recovery weather,\u201d the SpaceX launch director said about 1.5 minutes ahead of the planned liftoff. \u201cWe will be standing down at T-minus 30 seconds. At 3-0 seconds we will be calling \u2018hold.\u2019 Standby for that \u2018hold\u2019 call.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida is now scheduled for 8:35 a.m. EDT (12:35 UTC). Monday\u2019s launch window closes 27 minutes later.<\/p>\n

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about an hour prior to liftoff.<\/p>\n

\ufeff<\/p>\n

The 45th Weather Squadron, based at Cape Canaveral, gave the mission a 75 percent chance of acceptable weather for launch. The primary concerns in the forecast issued Sunday were for violations of the cumulus cloud and anvil cloud. Meteorologists also said the booster recovery weather on Monday was a \u201cmoderate\u201d risk on a low-moderate-high scale.<\/p>\n

\u201cA stationary boundary will remain draped across northern Florida Monday, maintaining deep atmospheric moisture across the Space Coast,\u201d launch weather officers wrote. \u201cWhile conditions aloft look more stable Monday compared to the weekend, there remains a small chance of a shower or thunderstorm in the morning across the Spaceport during the launch window.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe stalled boundary could generate elevated winds and a higher chance of showers Monday near the booster recovery location.\u201d<\/p>\n

This will be the fifth scheduled launch attempt for the mission, designated KF-02. During the first countdown on Thursday, SpaceX stopped the clock prior to the start of fueling and later said on social media it had delayed the launch a day to allow for \u201cadditional vehicle checkouts.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9 was lowered into the horizontal position at pad 40, presumably to work on a technical problem with the rocket. Then, just a few hours before the planned T-0 on Friday, the company announced the launch was called off and rescheduled for Saturday.<\/p>\n

\"\"Sunrise at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station as SpaceX prepared for a launch attempt of its Falcon 9 rocket on the KF-02 mission on Sunday, Aug. 10, 2025. Image: Adam Bernstein\/Spaceflight Now<\/p>\n

For Saturday\u2019s launch attempt, the 45th Weather Squadron was forecasting only a 40 percent chance for favorable weather but offered some hope that rain clouds would stay offshore. However, it was not to be. The countdown was halted by the launch director with 28 seconds left on the clock, as heavy rain started to fall at the pad.<\/p>\n

The booster for the KF-02 mission, tail number B1091, is a converted Falcon Heavy core stage that is flying for the first time. In a May 7 social media post, Jon Edwards, SpaceX vice president of Falcon and Dragon, said that B1091 will be used as a Falcon 9 booster \u201ca handful of times before being reconfigured and flying as a Falcon Heavy\u201d center booster.<\/p>\n

\"\"A SpaceX Falcon 9 payload fairing, containing 24 of Amazon\u2019s Project Kuiper satellites, rolls out of Amazon\u2019s payload processing facility at Space Florida\u2019s Launch and Landing Facility on Monday, Aug. 5, 2025. The satellites will launch on the KF-02 mission, the second Falcon 9 flight carrying these broadband satellites into low Earth orbit. Image: Amazon<\/p>\n

If weather permits, the Falcon 9 will liftoff on a north-easterly trajectory, and the first-stage booster will target a landing on SpaceX\u2019s drone ship \u2018A Shortfall of Gravitas\u2019 a little more than eight minutes later. If successful, this will be the 120th booster landing on this vessel and the 486th booster landing to date.<\/p>\n

About eight and a half minutes into flight, Falcon 9\u2019s second stage will place the Kuiper satellites into an initial parking orbit, before making a short three-second burn almost 53 minutes into flight to circularize the orbit. The approximately seven-minute satellite deployment sequence begins at T+56 minutes, 18 seconds.<\/p>\n

The rescheduled launch now falls around the time students are arriving for the first day of school in Brevard County, where Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is located.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Poor weather in the booster recovery zone caused a scrub of the KF-02 mission, preventing the launch of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-57821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}