SpaceX will launch one other batch of its Starlink web satellites to orbit early Tuesday (Sept. 12), and you’ll be able to watch the motion live.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is about to launch 21 more Starlink web satellites from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base Tuesday at 2:57 a.m. EDT (0657 GMT; 11:57 p.m. Sept. 11 local California time).
You may watch it live via SpaceX. Coverage is predicted to start out about five minutes before liftoff.
Related: Starlink satellite train: The right way to see and track it within the night sky
The Falcon 9’s first stage is predicted to return to Earth for a landing within the Pacific Ocean, on the SpaceX droneship Of Course I Still Love You, about 8.5 minutes after launch.
This shall be the eleventh launch and landing for this first-stage booster, in line with the SpaceX mission description on the corporate’s website.
The Falcon 9’s upper stage is scheduled to deploy the Starlink satellites about 62 minutes after liftoff.
Tuesday morning’s launch shall be the sixty fourth of 2023 for SpaceX, which is blowing past the record it set last yr with 61 launches.
SpaceX is outpacing the remaining of the world in space missions this yr, with nearly all of its launches supporting the corporate’s Starlink megaconstellation.
The entire variety of operational Starlink satellites in orbit currently exceeds 4,600, in line with astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, who tracks the constellation on his website, and SpaceX hopes to extend the number to as many as 42,000 over the long haul.