Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket stands ready to launch the Turksat 5A mission. (credit: SpaceX)
SpaceX will seek to kick off what promises to be a busy year of launches on Thursday evening, when a Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch the Turksat 5A communications satellite. The 3.4-ton satellite will be deployed into a geostationary transfer orbit.
The launch will take place from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The mission has a four-hour launch window that opens at 8:28pm ET (01:28 UTC Friday), with a backup opportunity a day later. The weather forecast is generally favorable, with a 70 percent chance of "go" conditions on Thursday.
The mission will use previously flown hardware for both the rocket's first stage, as well as the payload fairing. This will be the fourth flight of this booster core, which previously launched a GPS III satellite for the US Space Force in June 2020 as well as two Starlink missions for SpaceX, most recently on October 24. Each half of this mission's payload fairings has also flown one earlier mission.
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