SpaceX to launch third consecutive Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg SFB, uninterrupted by a Cape mission – Spaceflight Now

SpaceX is making ready to launch its one hundred and twenty fifth Falcon 9 rocket of 2025, which is able to carry a batch of Starlink V2 Mini satellites into low Earth orbit. The firm’s first mission of the month will take flight from Vandenberg Space Force Base Friday morning.

Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) is scheduled for six:21 a.m. PDT (9:21 a.m. EDT / 1321 UTC). This will probably be SpaceX’s forty seventh launch from Vandenberg to date this yr.

Spaceflight Now may have reside protection starting about half-hour previous to liftoff.



SpaceX will launch this mission utilizing the Falcon 9 booster with the tail quantity B1097. This will probably be its second launch following Starlink 17-8 on Sept. 3.

More than eight minutes after liftoff, B1097 will goal an autonomous touchdown on the drone ship, Of Course I Still Love You. If profitable, this would be the one hundred and fifty fifth landing for this vessel and the 514th booster touchdown for SpaceX so far.

The 28 Starlink satellites onboard at set to be deployed from the rocket’s higher stage a bit of greater than an hour after liftoff.

Mind the hole

This is the primary time since SpaceX started launching Falcon 9 rockets in 2010 that it’ll fly three Falcon 9 rockets from Vandenberg uninterrupted by certainly one of its missions from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station or NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

That could very properly be as a consequence of tropical exercise, like Hurricane Humberto and Hurricane Imelda, which created hazardous situations within the Atlantic Ocean and at SpaceX’s launch websites for a number of days. As of Thursday at midday, the National Hurricane Center was at the moment monitoring two disturbances, with one forecast to maneuver diagonally throughout the Florida peninsula over the following few days.

There have been only a handful of cases of back-to-back Falcon 9 launches from Vandenberg for one motive or one other. Prior to now these have included the next (dates primarily based on UTC launch time):

• Starlink 17-9 (Sep. 6, 2025) – SDA T1TL-B (Sep. 10, 2025)
• Starlink 11-11 (April 7, 2025) – NROL-192 (April 12, 2025)
• Starlink 11-8 (Jan. 21, 2025) – Starlink 11-6 (Jan. 24, 2025)
• Starlink 9-17 (Sep. 20, 2024) – Starlink 9-8 (Sep. 25, 2025)
• Starlink 8-8 (June 8, 2024) – Starlink 9-1 (June 19, 2024)

SpaceX has been pushing to extend their launch cadence from Vandenberg Space Force Base, which permits occasion like this to be attainable. Right now, SpaceX is permitted to launch as much as 70 instances from the West Coast, in accordance with the U.S. Air Force.

In a publish on his X account on Monday, Kiko Dontchev, vice chairman of Launch for SpaceX mentioned that the corporate was “one tropical system away from hitting 17 (launches) in September” throughout all three of its present launch pads.

“Special shout out to the entire west coast team for their first ever 8 launch/month,” Dontchev mentioned. “It’s also the first time since October 2019 that Vandy launched 50% or more of the manifest.”

SpaceX is eyeing as much as 100 launches from the West Coast by means of a mix of each SLC-4E and SLC-6, assuming permission is granted by the U.S. Air Force. The latter pad could be outfitted to permit as much as 5 Falcon Heavy launches per yr.

Beyond Starlink missions, SpaceX additionally has some notable buyer flights remaining on the manifest for 2025. Those embrace the November launches of each Transporter-15 trip share and the Sentinel-6B spacecraft, the latter of which is a NASA-led mission in partnership with the European Space Agency, EUMETSAT (the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites), NASA, and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales, French Space Agency).

SpaceX can be making ready to launch the following batch of satellites for the Space Development Agency no sooner than Oct. 14. The SDA is aiming for an almost month-to-month cadence for this constellation, so there could also be two extra launches on faucet earlier than the tip of the yr.