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SpaceX launches 11th Space Coast mission of 2024
SpaceX knocked out the 11th launch from the Space Coast for the year under clear blue skies on Tuesday afternoon.
A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Space Launch Complex 40 at 3:11 p.m. carrying the Merah Putih 2 telecommunications satellite for Telkom Indonesia to a geosynchronous transfer orbit.
This was the 17th launch of the first stage booster, and SpaceX made a recovery landing downrange on the Just Read the Instructions droneship in the Atlantic Ocean. One of the most flown of SpaceX's boosters, it previously launched the Crew-3 and Crew-4 human spaceflight missions among others.
SpaceX has flown all but one of the launches from the Space Coast so far in 2023 with United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur having flown the other.
Elon Musk's company has also flown six missions from California so far this year, so this flight will make it 16 across its three launch pads on both coasts as part of a year that could see as many as 150 launches, according to Musk.
That doesn't include test launches from Texas of its in-development Starship and Super Heavy, which is gearing up for its third attempt at a successful suborbital launch as early as next month.
2024 Orlando Sentinel. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
