SpaceX plans to launch 20 extra of its Starlink broadband satellites, together with 13 with direct-to-cell functionality, from California early Wednesday morning (Sept. 25).
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 20 Starlink spacecraft is scheduled to raise off from Vandenberg Area Drive Base, on California’s central coast, Wednesday at 3:01 a.m. EDT (0701 GMT; 9:01 p.m. on Sept. 24 California time).
You possibly can watch the motion dwell through SpaceX’s X account; protection will start about 5 minutes earlier than launch.
If all goes based on plan, the Falcon 9’s first stage will come again to Earth 8.5 minutes after liftoff, touchdown on the SpaceX drone ship “Of Course I Nonetheless Love You” within the Pacific Ocean.
It will likely be the tenth launch and touchdown for this specific booster, based on a SpaceX mission description.Â
The Falcon 9’s higher stage, in the meantime, will proceed powering its method to low Earth orbit, deploying the 20 satellites there 60 minutes after liftoff. The newcomers will be a part of the Starlink megaconstellation, which consists of greater than 6,300 energetic spacecraft.
Associated: Starlink satellite tv for pc prepare: Find out how to see and observe it within the night time sky
The Starlink launch is a part of a usually busy week for SpaceX. Elon Musk‘s firm goals to launch the Crew-9 astronaut mission to the Worldwide Area Station (ISS) for NASA on Saturday (Sept. 28), sending it aloft through a Falcon 9 from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Area Drive Station.
Crew-9 is not your typical ISS astronaut mission. It should launch with two crewmembers as an alternative of the same old 4, as a result of it is going to take residence to Earth two individuals already residing on the ISS — NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who arrived in June aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule.
Starliner suffered thruster points on its method to the ISS, and NASA determined to deliver the spacecraft residence uncrewed in consequence. Williams and Wilmore will come residence with the 2 Crew-9 astronauts — NASA’s Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov, of Russia’s area company Roscosmos — aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule “Freedom” in February 2025. Â
