On Monday, SpaceX launches the Starlink mission and gets ready to undock a Crew Dragon from the ISS.

SpaceX is getting ready for Crew Dragon Endurance's undocking from the International Space Station and will conclude the weekend with two scheduled Falcon 9 launches from Florida and California.

At 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 UTC), the Falcon 9 rocket supporting the Starlink 6-43 mission blasted out from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. It will expand the constellation of low Earth orbit satellites by 23 Starlink spacecraft.

With no extra risk criteria indicated as watch items, the 45th Weather Squadron's launch weather forecast indicates a higher than 95% chance of favorable weather for liftoff.

Tail number B1077, the first stage booster for this mission, made its eleventh launch. It had previously supported the Northrop Grumman 20 (NG-20) Cygnus journey to the International Space Station (ISS), the Crew-5 mission, and the Commercial Resupply Services 28 (CRS-28) mission.

The booster touched down on the SpaceX droneship "Just Read the Instructions" around 8.5 minutes after takeoff. This will be the 218th booster landing and the 74th landing on JRTI overall.

This trip coincides with NASA's and SpaceX's plans to launch later this month the first Cargo Dragon spacecraft of the second generation, which is intended to reach the orbiting outpost from SLC-40. It will make advantage of the newly installed crew access tower for the first time; a launch date has not yet been disclosed.

Dragon returning home

SpaceX is getting ready with NASA to return the four members of the Crew-7 mission from the International Space Station (ISS) while working on the Starlink 6-43 mission from Florida and the Starlink 7-17 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

During a ceremony on Sunday morning, the astronauts and cosmonaut officially said goodbye to the remaining members of Expedition 70. The ritual concluded in a change of command ceremony, in which astronaut Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency handed Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko the ceremonial key.

"You are on your way to spending 1,000 days in space, having already beaten the previous record. Mogensen addressed Kononenko, saying, "I don't think I could leave the command in better hands."

Crew Dragon Endurance is scheduled to undock on Monday, March 11 at 11:05 a.m. EDT (1505 UTC), and splashdown is expected to occur on Tuesday, March 12, at around 5:35 a.m. EDT (0935 UTC).

NASA and Boeing postpone the first manned launch of the Starliner capsule until early May.

Boeing's new Starliner capsule's much-delayed inaugural crewed voyage has been rescheduled.

The Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission to the International Space Station (ISS) was originally planned to launch in the middle of April. But as of this Friday, March 8, NASA and Boeing have changed their minds about that.

Agency representatives stated in an update on Friday afternoon that CFT is "currently scheduled to launch [in] early May due to space station scheduling."

CFT is scheduled to launch from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station aboard an Atlas V rocket built by United Launch Alliance. Starliner and NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS) for a roughly 10-day stay.

Launch day for the test flight was set for last July. Nevertheless, the liftoff was delayed until this spring due to technical difficulties, namely a difficulty with the suspension lines on Starliner's primary parachutes and the fact that a large portion of the capsule's cabling was covered in flammable tape.

NASA stated in a late-January report that CFT was still on pace for a mid-April launch and that those issues are under control. But as Friday's announcement attests, ISS traffic problems can sometimes cause schedule changes.

Under a multibillion-dollar deal that Boeing secured with NASA in September 2014, the corporation has been working on Starliner. To date, the capsule has taken off on two unmanned test missions, both of which were intended to reach the ISS.

During the first mission, which took place in December 2019, Starliner encountered multiple issues and was unable to rendezvous with the orbiting laboratory as scheduled. On its retry, the capsule launched successfully in May 2022.

In September 2014, NASA also gave SpaceX a contract for commercial crew. Eight operational astronaut trips to the International Space Station (ISS) have now been launched by Elon Musk's firm on behalf of NASA; the most recent mission, Crew-8, lifted off on Sunday, March 3.