SpaceX plans to launch 23 extra of its Starlink web satellites from Florida’s Area Coast this night (Oct. 22).
A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 23 Starlink spacecraft is scheduled to carry off from Cape Canaveral Area Power Station tonight, throughout a greater than three-hour-long window that opens at 6:56 p.m. EDT (2256 GMT).
SpaceX will livestream the launch on X, starting about 5 minutes earlier than liftoff.
If all goes in line with plan, the Falcon 9’s first stage will come again to Earth about eight minutes after liftoff, touchdown on the drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas” within the Atlantic Ocean.
It will likely be the 18th launch and touchdown for this explicit booster, and its thirteenth Starlink mission, in line with a SpaceX mission description.
The Falcon 9’s higher stage, in the meantime, will haul the Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO), deploying them there about 65 minutes after liftoff.
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SpaceX at present operates greater than 6,400 Starlink satellites in LEO, in line with astrophysicist and satellite tv for pc tracker Jonathan McDowell.
However that quantity is ever-growing, as at present’s deliberate launch exhibits. SpaceX has carried out 98 Falcon 9 missions in 2024 to date, and greater than two-thirds of them have been dedicated to constructing out the Starlink megaconstellation.
