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SpaceX is targeting Tuesday, September 17 at 6:50 p.m. ET for a Falcon 9 launch of the European Commission’s Galileo L13 mission to medium Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. If needed, there is a backup opportunity on Wednesday, September 18 at 6:46 p.m. ET. This will be the 22nd launch for this Falcon 9 first stage booster, which previously launched CRS-22, Crew-3, Turksat 5B, Crew-4, CRS-25, Eutelsat HOTBIRD 13G, O3B mPOWER, PSN SATRIA, Telkomsat Marah Putih 2, and 12 Starlink missions. Following stage separation, the first stage will land on the Just Read the Instructions droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. Rapid and reliable reusability is key to making life multiplanetary – every mission is an opportunity to learn and inform future missions. During the Galileo L12 mission earlier this year, the Falcon 9 booster was expended to provide the additional performance needed to deliver the payload to its orbit. Data from that mission informed subtle design and operational changes, including mass reductions and trajectory adjustments, that will allow us to safely recover and reuse this booster. Falcon 9 is ready to safely deliver Galileo L13 to orbit and return to the droneship in the Atlantic Ocean. The booster reentry trajectory will result in higher heating and dynamic pressure on the booster than many of our historical landings. Although the reentry conditions are on the higher end of past missions, they are still acceptable. This landing attempt will test the bounds of recovery, giving us valuable data on the design of the vehicle in these elevated entry conditions. This in turn will help us innovate on future vehicle designs to make our vehicles more robust and rapidly reusable while expanding into more challenging reentry conditions.
