Helium issue on Falcon 9 booster scrubs Starlink 6-77 mission at Cape Canaveral Space Flight Now

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Helium issue on Falcon 9 booster scrubs Starlink 6-77 mission at Cape Canaveral Space Flight Now
A rainbow over the pad 40 moments after SpaceX scrubbed the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now.

Update 3 November at 13:42 EST: Added information about the booster flying this mission.

Update Nov 3 at 5:40 PM EST: A helium problem scrubbed the mission.

A helium-related problem on the first stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket scrubbed a launch from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Sunday. The mission was set to add another batch of 23 Starlink V2 Mini satellites to SpaceX’s growing mega-constellation.

The timing of the Starlink 6-77 mission from pad 40 is now up in the air, as a delay to Monday would put it just hours before the scheduled launch of the CRS-31 Cargo Dragon mission to the International Space Station. NASA has a 24-hour stand down agreement with SpaceX where it will not launch another Falcon 9 rocket with that period prior to a NASA mission.

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning approximately one hour before departure.

Heading into the launch opportunity on Sunday, the 45th Weather Squadron heralded fairly idyllic conditions at the site during the launch window. Meteorologists tracked a 90 percent chance of good weather at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40), with ascent winds and cumulus clouds as the primary concerns. But launch weather officers also flagged the booster recovery weather as a watch item, listing it as a “moderate” risk.

They also forecast that weather conditions will drop to 80 percent favorable on Monday, with the risk of booster recovery rising to the “high” level.

As of the 9 a.m. EST (1300 UTC) update from the National Hurricane Center, a storm categorized as “Disturbance 2” has a 10 percent chance of becoming a tropical cyclone within 48 hours. The storm is parked just north of Haiti and the Dominican Republic and south of the Bahamas.

The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, tail number B1085 in the SpaceX fleet, will be launched for the third time. It previously supported the Crew-9 astronaut mission to the International Space Station and Starlink 10-5.

The SpaceX drone ship, ‘Just Read the Instructions’, is on tap to support this mission, stationed in the Atlantic Ocean west of the Bahamas. If all goes according to plan, this will mark the 96th booster landing for JRTI and the 362nd booster landing to date.