Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 13-1 This week’s first launch marked the start of a new group for the Starlink constellation — Group 13. Falcon 9 launched from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, Jan. 21, at 12:24 AM EST (05:24 UTC) during a four-hour launch window. The expected payload of 21 Starlink v2 Mini satellites, will launch to a 43-degree inclination orbit on a southeasterly trajectory into an initial orbit of approximately 272 km by 283 km. There is speculation that there may have been additional payloads of an unspecified nature aboard this flight. Factors including the lack of video of the second stage and payload in SpaceX’s webcast are now backed up by a photograph published on X that clearly shows 23 dots in the Starlink “train”. The booster supporting this mission is B1083 flying for the eighth time, having previously flown Crew-8, Starlink Group 6-48, Starlink Group 6-56, Polaris Dawn, CRS-31, Starlink Group 6-65, and Astranis: From One to Many. The first flight was on March 4, 2024. SpaceX’s autonomous droneship A Shortfall Of Gravitas was stationed downrange in the Atlantic Ocean for booster recovery operations. The booster landed successfully on the droneship and will be returned to Port Canaveral for check-over and re-flight. Falcon 9 is a 3.9-meter diameter, 70-meter-tall two-stage rocket. Nine Merlin 1D engines power the first stage booster, while the second stage utilizes a single vacuum-optimized Merlin engine. Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are the first and only reusable orbital rockets in service today, with one Falcon booster having flown twenty-five flights. The two payload fairings are also recovered and reused after flights. If current schedules hold, this will be SpaceX’s ninth mission in 2025 and its 443rd mission overall.