SpaceX will notch two massive milestones on a single Falcon 9 launch right now (Oct. 19), and you’ll watch the motion stay.
A Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch 28 of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband satellites from Florida’s Cape Canaveral House Drive Station right now, throughout a four-hour window that opens at 10:52 a.m. EDT (1452 GMT).
SpaceX has lofted 9,988 Starlink satellites so far, in accordance with astrophysicist and satellite tv for pc tracker Jonathan McDowell. So right now’s launch will take that quantity above 10,000. It’s going to even be the record-breaking thirty first liftoff for this Falcon 9’s first stage, a booster designated 1067.
You’ll be able to see historical past made stay: SpaceX will stream the flight by way of its web site 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 corporate supplied Starlink service for the primary time with a public beta check in October 2020 and began a industrial rollout the subsequent 12 months.
Starlink now gives service to thousands and thousands of consumers all over the world, 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 these days: SpaceX launched 89 Starlink missions in 2024 and has already exceeded that quantity this 12 months. And do not anticipate it to cease anytime quickly: SpaceX already has permission to loft 12,000 Starlink satellites, and the megaconstellation might finally include greater than 30,000 spacecraft.
A lot of the 9,988 Starlink satellites that SpaceX has launched so far stay lively — 8,610 are presently operational, in accordance with McDowell. A lot of the others have been deorbited, guided right down to deplete in Earth’s environment. (Every Starlink satellite tv for pc has an operational lifetime of about 5 years.)
Earlier Booster 1067 missions
If all goes in accordance with plan right now, 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 will likely be the thirty first launch and landing for the booster, in accordance with a SpaceX mission description.
Such intensive rocket reuse is a core a part of SpaceX’s plan to decrease the price of spaceflight and enhance its effectivity.
That already-successful technique might take an enormous leap ahead quickly; the corporate is creating an enormous, absolutely 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 phases are expendable.)
The Falcon 9’s higher stage, in the meantime, will haul the 28 Starlink satellites to LEO right now, deploying them about 64 minutes after launch.
