SpaceX is kicking off the weekend with a Falcon 9 rocket launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base Saturday morning. This will likely be its 135 Falcon 9 launch of 2025, breaking its report variety of orbital launches achieved in all of 2024.
The Starlink 11-12 mission will add one other 28 broadband satellites to the constellation of greater than 8,700 spacecraft in low Earth orbit. SpaceX is focusing on liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East at 7:20 a.m. PDT (10:20 a.m. EDT / 1420 UTC).
Spaceflight Now may have dwell protection starting about half-hour previous to liftoff.
SpaceX will launch the mission utilizing the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail quantity, B1081. This will likely be its nineteenth launch after beforehand flying a number of NASA missions, together with Crew-7, PACE and TRACERS.
Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1081 will goal an autonomous touchdown on the drone ship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You’. If profitable, this would be the one hundred and sixtieth touchdown on this vessel and the 523rd booster touchdown thus far.
The mission comes almost every week after SpaceX launched its 10,000th Starlink satellite tv for pc thus far. Prior to Saturday’s launch, SpaceX had greater than 8,700 satellites on orbit, in response to statistics maintained by astronomer and professional orbital tracker, Jonathan McDowell.