SpaceX to launch 24 Starlink satellites on Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg SFB – Spaceflight Now

SpaceX is making ready to launch one other 24 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit onboard a Falcon 9 rocket flying from Vandenberg Space Force Base Saturday evening.

The Starlink 17-2 mission will take a south-westerly trajectory because the rocket soars from Space Launch Complex 4 East. It will deploy the satellites right into a polar orbit to bolster web service on the planet’s polar areas.

SpaceX is focusing on liftoff at 8:55 p.m. PDT (11:55 p.m. EDT / 0355 UTC). Spaceflight Now could have dwell protection of the mission starting about half-hour previous to launch.



SpaceX is utilizing the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail quantity B1075, which is able to make its nineteenth journey to area and again. Its earlier missions included the Transporter-11 rideshare, SARah-2 and 15 batches of Starlink satellites.

Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1075 will goal a touchdown on the droneship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You,’ positioned within the Pacific Ocean. If profitable, this would be the 142nd touchdown for this vessel and the 481st booster touchdown up to now for SpaceX.

The mission comes as the corporate readies its third and ultimate, deliberate astronaut mission of the yr, which is about to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday on the earliest. The 4 members of that mission, dubbed Crew-11, arrived within the Sunshine State Saturday afternoon forward of a launch rehearsal scheduled for Monday.