Today could see a new record for space flight, as five separate rocket launches are scheduled for one 24-hour period. The events involve four different providers and show the increasing pace of launches, covering missions including sending communications satellites into Earth orbit, creating short-duration microgravity environments for research purposes, and launching unknown payloads for governments.
The five launches today, Tuesday February 4, will be the highest number of launches in a single day if all go ahead as planned, as noted by Space.com. The first launch has already occurred, with SpaceX launching a Starlink mission from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 5:15 a.m. ET. This mission carries 21 Starlink satellites to add to SpaceX’s communication network, including 13 with Direct to Cell capabilities.
The next launch on the docket is Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-29 Mission, scheduled for 11 a.m. ET. This launch had been planned for last week but was delayed due to both weather conditions and an issue with the booster’s avionics. Taking off from Launch Site One in West Texas, the mission will simulate the moon’s gravity for its 30 payloads on board, which are primarily experiments and technology tests for use in lunar explorations. The payloads will experiences two minutes of lunar gravity, with experiments including those from NASA being on board.
The third launch of the day is New Zealand company Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket launch scheduled for 3:43 p.m. ET. This will be a morning launch from the company’s New Zealand launch site, with the mission named “IOT 4 You and Me” and carrying satellites to add to the IoT constellation from company Kinéis.
Fourth up is yet another SpaceX launch, with the Maxar 3 mission scheduled to launch from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 6:07 p.m. ET. This will carry a pair of Earth-observations satellites from the Maxar company, as part of a series of missions launching the WorldView satellites.
Finally, there is a mysterious launch from Russian space agency Roscosmos, with an unknown payload scheduled to launch using a Soyuz rocket from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome at 10 p.m. ET.
The previous record for most launches in a day was four, with August 4, 2022 being particularly notable for seeing launches from Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance, Rocket Lab, and SpaceX.
