A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch 23 Starlink web satellites to orbit from Florida tonight (Oct. 21) on the corporate’s second mission of the day.
The Falcon 9 is scheduled to lift off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station tonight at 10:17 p.m. EDT (0217 GMT on Oct. 22). If SpaceX cannot hit that focus on, there are five backup opportunities available, from 11:07 p.m. EDT to 2:15 a.m. EDT (0307 to 0515 GMT), based on a company mission description.
SpaceX will webcast the launch via its account on X (formerly generally known as Twitter). Coverage will start about five minutes before liftoff.
Related: Starlink satellite train: The way to see and track it within the night sky
The Falcon 9’s first stage will come back to Earth for a vertical landing tonight, touching down about 8.5 minutes after launch on the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas, which can be stationed within the Atlantic Ocean.
It’ll be the fourth flight for this rocket’s first stage, based on the mission description.
The 23 Starlink satellites are scheduled to deploy from the Falcon 9’s upper stage about 65.5 minutes after launch.
Tonight’s launch can be the second of the day for SpaceX, if all goes based on plan. The corporate launched 21 Starlink satellites from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base early this morning.
Starlink is SpaceX’s megaconstellation in low Earth orbit, which provides web service to customers all over the world. There are currently almost 4,900 operational Starlink satellites, and the number continues to grow.