321 Launch: Space news you may have missed over the past week

Emre Kelly, Florida Today
·2 min read
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SpaceX launches Amazonas Nexus from Cape Canaveral

Despite only being early February, the Space Coast has already seen seven launches as of last night.

At 8:32 p.m. EST, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket vaulted off its pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station with Amazonas Nexus, a roughly 10,000-pound communications satellite owned by Spanish operator Hispasat. The post-launch booster landing went smoothly, too.

Monday night's missions means the Space Coast is well on its way to the stated goal of up to 92 launches in 2023. Though the final tally will likely be lower due to hardware delays, weather, and other factors, the current pace of flying more than once a week is a solid start – and a sign of things to come.

Read the full post-launch story here.

NASA and Navy conduct first joint capsule training at KSC

At Kennedy Space Center, NASA and Navy teams are literally getting their feet wet during the first joint exercise designed to give teams experience with recovering Artemis capsules from the Pacific Ocean starting next year.

Using a 20,000-pound training capsule built at KSC, divers and recovery teams are practicing securing Orion capsules after splashdown, deploying an inflatable support "porch," and recovering actor-astronauts. Monday's training included a scenario in which one of the mock astronauts was injured, requiring the use of a stretcher while on the water. The training focuses on both nominal and off-nominal, or emergency, conditions.

The training is building up to Artemis II, NASA's first mission to take astronauts to the moon under the Artemis program. Though they won't land on the surface, four astronauts will orbit the moon before returning to Earth and splashing down in the Pacific. From there, Navy teams will ride out to meet the capsule, clear any hazardous gases, then recover the crew before lifting them into a helicopter for transport to an amphibious ship.

After several weeks of training at KSC, the mock Orion capsule will be transported to the West Coast and stored there for future training opportunities. Artemis II is slated to fly from KSC no earlier than mid-2024.

See our gallery of the water recovery operations here.

Next launch: Starlink

Back at the Cape, meanwhile, SpaceX is preparing another Falcon 9 rocket for liftoff no earlier than Saturday, Feb. 11. If the schedule holds, the batch of dozens of Starlink internet satellites should fly sometime between midnight and 5 a.m. EST, though an exact T-0 has not yet been released. Federal filings for the mission began appearing today; SpaceX likely won't confirm its existence until Thursday at the earliest.

For the latest, see our full schedule at floridatoday.com/launchschedule.

Contact Emre Kelly at aekelly@floridatoday.com. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @EmreKelly.

NASA and Navy teams practice Orion capsule recovery operations at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Feb. 6, 2023. The capsule, a nearly 20,000-pound training article built at KSC, is hosting training exercises between NASA and the Department of Defense for the first time. Monday's training tasks included securing the capsule, deploying an inflatable "porch," and recovering four mock astronauts. The training focuses on both nominal and off-nominal, or emergency, conditions.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: 321 Launch: Space news you may have missed over the past week