SpaceX is ready to launch 22 more of its Starlink web satellites from Florida tonight (Oct. 8) on the primary leg of a spaceflight doubleheader for the corporate.
The Starlink spacecraft are scheduled to lift off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station tonight at 9:06 p.m. EDT (0106 GMT on Oct. 9). 4 backup opportunities can be found as well, from 9:57 p.m. EDT until 12:29 a.m. EDT (0157 to 0429 GMT on Oct. 9).
You possibly can watch the motion live via SpaceX’s account on X (formerly Twitter) when the time comes. Coverage is anticipated to start about five minutes before liftoff.
Related: Starlink satellite train: The best way to see and track it within the night sky
If all goes in keeping with plan, the Falcon 9’s first stage will return to Earth for a vertical landing at sea on the SpaceX drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas about 8.5 minutes after launch.
It’s going to be the 14th liftoff and landing for this particular Falcon 9 first stage, in keeping with a SpaceX mission description. Two of its 13 previous missions sent astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA.
The 22 Starlink satellites, meanwhile, are scheduled to deploy from the Falcon 9’s upper stage into low Earth orbit about 65 minutes after launch.
Tonight’s Starlink launch can be followed in brief order by one other, that one from the West Coast. A distinct Falcon 9 is scheduled to loft 22 Starlinks from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base at 3:23 a.m. EDT (0723 GMT).
These two Starlink missions can be the 71st and 72nd orbital launches of the yr for SpaceX. Nearly all of those liftoffs have been dedicated to constructing out the Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of greater than 4,830 operational satellites.