SpaceX Falcon 9 mission Monday night ends 11-day launch drought from Florida's Space Coast

Ending a wind-aided 11-day launch drought — the Space Coast's longest since April — SpaceX finally sent a Falcon 9 rocket hurtling skyward late Monday night after this weekend's wild weather subsided.

SpaceX's Starlink 6-34 mission lifted off from Launch Complex 40 at 11:01 p.m. EST at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station as a cold front chilled the temperature to 56 degrees.

The launch, which lifted another 23 Starlink internet satellites into low-Earth orbit, was the first from Brevard County since SpaceX's Dec. 7 Starlink mission.

That marked the longest local pause since a 12-day launch gap extending from April 7 (the SpaceX Intelsat 40e/NASA TEMPO mission) to April 19 (the SpaceX Starlink 6-2 mission) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Space Florida, the state’s aerospace finance and development authority, touted the Cape's bustling orbital launch schedule in a Dec. 12 morning tweet.

"Florida spaceports have sent approximately 1,918,600 lbs. of payloads to orbit in 2023," the Space Florida tweet said.

"We are likely to reach 2 million lbs. to orbit by (end of year)," the tweet said.

Hours later on Dec. 12, SpaceX crews scrubbed an earlier attempt to launch the Starlink 6-34 mission with 1 minute, 45 seconds remaining in the countdown, citing high ground-level winds.

Monday's SpaceX mission marked the record-extending 69th orbital launch from the Space Coast this year, with two weeks remaining on the 2023 calendar.

On that note, though SpaceX has yet to make an announcement, a National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency navigational warning indicates Cape Canaveral's next launch window will open late Friday night and extend 4½ hours into early Saturday morning.

This upcoming launch window opens at 11 p.m. Friday and extends until 3:31 a.m. Saturday. Those hours mirror those of Monday's Starlink 6-34 mission.

Then on Dec. 28, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, a secretive Space Force space plane, on the USSF-52 mission at 7 p.m. from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The launch window extends for four hours, should delays arise.

For the latest launch schedule updates at the Cape, visit floridatoday.com/launchschedule.

Rick Neale is a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY (for more of his stories, click here.) Contact Neale at 321-242-3638 or rneale@floridatoday.com. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1

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This article originally appeared on Florida Today: SpaceX Starlink mission Monday night ends 11-day Florida launch drought