Discussion: starlink-7 launch this evening

The next 60 satellites are scheduled to launch this evening at 9:25 PM EDT from SLC-40 in Florida (weather permitting). That's an hour after local sunset, so the lighting might be interesting. Launch live stream will be at the usual SpaceX place.

Preliminary orbits for the group show the first good pass for New England early Thurs morning, June 4. (3:50 AM EDT), with a good pass at 9:35 PM EDT Thurs night. The morning pass will be low for us in the Baltimore/D.C. area but might be worth a shot. Here are the preliminary pass predicts from heavens-above:

Boston/New England
Baltimore/D.C.

Note that this group is the first outfitted with sunshades to make them fainter. They might only be bright enough to see in the first couple of weeks during orbit raising, so best to try and see them early.

And for fun, here's an animation comparing the orbits of the whole starlink constellation on March 26 vs June 1. They've spread out quite a bit over the 2 months of our lockdown!

Given that the launch is after sunset for the east coast of the US, it may be possible to see it. Second stage should be burning until the vehicle is off the coast of NYC. After that it might still be sunlit. Here's a rough path. Purple circle is the 10-deg elevation line for 210km altitude, which should be the approx alt at SECO (8.5 mins after launch):



Will require a low SE horizon and fairly clear skies along the line-of-sight to see this. Starting to cloud up here, but looks OK offshore to the SE. It'll be a longshot...

6 mins to launch.