A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch 22 Starlink web satellites to orbit this evening (Oct. 17), if all goes in accordance with plan.
The Falcon 9 is scheduled to lift off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 5:20 p.m. EDT (2120 GMT). If SpaceX doesn’t hit that focus on, there are five backup opportunities available between 6:11 p.m. EDT and eight:48 p.m. EDT (2211 to 0048 GMT), company representatives wrote in a mission description.
You’ll be able to watch the motion live via SpaceX’s account on X (formerly referred to as Twitter). Coverage will start about five minutes before launch.
Related: Starlink satellite train: Tips on how to see and track it within the night sky
The rocket’s first stage will come back to Earth, touching down at sea on the drone ship Just Read the Instructions about 8.5 minutes after launch. It’ll be the sixteenth flight for this particular rocket’s first stage — one shy of the corporate’s reuse record, which was set just last month.
The 22 Starlink satellites, meanwhile, are scheduled to deploy from the Falcon 9’s upper stage about 65 minutes after launch.
SpaceX has launched greater than 70 orbital missions in 2023, most of which have been dedicated to constructing out the corporate’s Starlink megaconstellation.
Starlink, which beams web service all the way down to customers all over the world, currently consists of nearly 4,900 operational satellites, and the number keeps growing, as tonight’s planned launch shows.