SpaceX will notch two massive milestones on a single Falcon 9 launch immediately (Oct. 19), and you’ll watch the motion dwell.
A Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch 28 of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband satellites from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station immediately, throughout a four-hour window that opens at 10:52 a.m. EDT (1452 GMT).
SpaceX has lofted 9,988 Starlink satellites to date, according to astrophysicist and satellite tv for pc tracker Jonathan McDowell. So immediately’s launch will take that quantity above 10,000. It will even be the record-breaking thirty first liftoff for this Falcon 9’s first stage, a booster designated 1067.
You can see historical past made dwell: SpaceX will stream the flight through its website and its X account, starting about 5 minutes earlier than launch.
SpaceX launched its first two Starlink prototypes to low Earth orbit (LEO) in February 2018, then started constructing the megaconstellation in earnest 15 months later. The firm provided Starlink service for the primary time with a public beta check in October 2020 and began a industrial rollout the following yr.
Starlink now offers service to hundreds of thousands of shoppers around the globe, and SpaceX continues to beef up that product by sending an increasing number of satellites to the ultimate frontier.
The tempo has reached extraordinary ranges recently: SpaceX launched 89 Starlink missions in 2024 and has already exceeded that quantity this yr. And do not anticipate it to cease anytime quickly: SpaceX already has permission to loft 12,000 Starlink satellites, and the megaconstellation may finally encompass greater than 30,000 spacecraft.
Most of the 9,988 Starlink satellites that SpaceX has launched so far stay energetic — 8,610 are at present operational, in line with McDowell. Most of the others have been deorbited, guided all the way down to expend in Earth’s ambiance. (Each Starlink satellite tv for pc has an operational lifetime of about 5 years.)
Previous Booster 1067 missions
If all goes in line with plan immediately, Booster 1067 will come again to Earth about 8.5 minutes after liftoff, touchdown within the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas.” It would be the thirty first launch and landing for the booster, in line with a SpaceX mission description.
Such in depth rocket reuse is a core a part of SpaceX’s plan to decrease the price of spaceflight and improve its effectivity.
That already-successful technique may take an enormous leap ahead quickly; the corporate is growing a large, totally reusable rocket known as Starship, which is designed to assist humanity settle Mars. (The Falcon 9 and its shut cousin the Falcon Heavy are solely partially reusable; their higher levels are expendable.)
The Falcon 9’s higher stage, in the meantime, will haul the 28 Starlink satellites to LEO immediately, deploying them about 64 minutes after launch.