SpaceX will notch two large milestones on a single Falcon 9 launch at present (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 Area Drive Station at present, 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 at present’s launch will take that quantity above 10,000. It is going to even be the record-breaking thirty first liftoff for this Falcon 9’s first stage, a booster designated 1067.
You may see historical past made stay: SpaceX will stream the flight by way of 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 corporate 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 thousands and thousands of shoppers 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 recently: SpaceX launched 89 Starlink missions in 2024 and has already exceeded that quantity this yr. And do not count on it to cease anytime quickly: SpaceX already has permission to loft 12,000 Starlink satellites, and the megaconstellation might ultimately include greater than 30,000 spacecraft.
A lot of the 9,988 Starlink satellites that SpaceX has launched so far stay energetic — 8,610 are at the moment operational, in response to McDowell. A lot of the others have been deorbited, guided all the way 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 response to plan at present, 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 is going to be the thirty first launch and landing for the booster, in response to 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 enhance its effectivity.
That already-successful technique might take a giant leap ahead quickly; the corporate is creating a large, absolutely reusable rocket referred to 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 at present, deploying them about 64 minutes after launch.
