On January 6 at 21:49 UTC, the Starlink 34 mission launched atop Falcon 9 booster 1062 from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This was a flight that showed just how well SpaceX is at reusing its rocket hardware. This was the fourth flight for the first stage Booster 1062, which successfully landed on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas. Both fairings were also reused, with one half on their fifth flight and the other on their fourth.

All 49 satellites were successfully deployed into orbit sixteen minutes after launch following one burn of the upper stage.

This was the first orbital launch of 2022, and it targeted the 53.2-degree inclination shell of the Starlink constellation, taking the unusual but steadily becoming the norm southern launch track down the Florida coast. This trajectory required the second stage to bend the trajectory further west after the first stage separation. The stated reason for this, explained on the webcast, was the weather conditions in the south were better for recovery of the booster and fairings in the winter months, which is critical for the high flight rate that Starlink requires. However, this incurs a loss of payload capacity so the rocket carried only 49 satellites instead of the 52 or 53 which have gone to the 53.2-degree inclination previously.

The Starlink satellites are ones that have our team feeling all the mixed emotions. Seeing SpaceX perfect its reusable rockets using their own hardware is awesome. Seeing people in low-infrastructure regions get infrastructure is awesome. We just wish Starlinks didn’t make such a mess of folks attempting to image the sky.

More Information

Starlink Mission (SpaceX via archive.today)

Launch video