SpaceX is poised to launched 22 Starlink web satellites to orbit from California on Sunday (Oct. 29), on the primary of two planned missions for the day.
A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on Sunday at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT; 2 a.m. local California time). If the Falcon 9 cannot get off the bottom on time, two backup opportunities can be found, at 5:50 a.m. EDT (0950 GMT) and 6:08 a.m. EDT (1008 GMT), based on a SpaceX mission description.
You possibly can watch the motion live via SpaceX’s account on X (formerly often known as Twitter). Coverage will start about five minutes before liftoff.
Related: Starlink satellite train: Methods to see and track it within the night sky
If all goes based on plan, the Falcon 9’s first stage will come back to Earth for a vertical landing about 8.5 minutes after launch on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, which will likely be stationed within the Pacific Ocean.
It’s going to be the seventh launch and landing for this rocket’s first stage, based on the mission description.
The 22 Starlink satellites, meanwhile, are scheduled to deploy from the Falcon 9’s upper stage about 62.5 minutes after liftoff.
Sunday morning’s launch is scheduled to be the primary of a doubleheader for SpaceX. The corporate also plans to loft 23 Starlink craft from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Sunday at 7:45 p.m. EDT (2345 GMT).
The Starlink broadband megaconstellation is ever-growing, as these two missions show. There are currently about 4,900 operational Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit, and SpaceX has permission to deploy about 12,000 of the craft.