SpaceX Launches STP-2 Mission in Stunning Early Tuesday Lift-off
At 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday, June 25, SpaceX launched the STP-2 mission from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Deployments began approximately 12 minutes after liftoff and ended approximately 3 hours and 32 minutes after liftoff.
The mission included the riskiest center core landing effort in SpaceX history. The 1st stage center core was traveling 20%+ faster than in previous Falcon Heavy missions due to the orbital track required to allow the second stage to achieve 4 different orbits during payload releases.
Falcon Heavy’s side boosters for the STP-2 mission previously supported the Arabsat-6A mission in April 2019. Following booster separation, Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters landed at SpaceX’s Landing Zones 1 and 2 (LZ-1 and LZ-2) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and the first stage booster crashed into the ocean near the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You that was positioned in the Atlantic Ocean.
The STP-2 mission used a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch vehicle to perform 20 commanded deployment actions and place 24 separate spacecraft in three different orbits. The spacecraft include the Air Force Research Laboratory Demonstration and Science Experiments (DSX) satellite; the NOAA-sponsored Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (COSMIC-2) constellation; four NASA experiments; and many other missions. For more detailed descriptions of the experiments on STP-2, visit our website at spacex.com/stp-2.
