On Monday, Sept. 25, at 3:23 a.m. ET, the California skies will light up. A Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX is ready to roar, taking 21 Starlink satellites to their new home in low Earth orbit (LEO).
The launch platform? Vandenberg Space Force Base in Florida. If you’re eager to catch this space event, turn to SpaceX’s account on X (previously known as Twitter). Live coverage kicks off approximately five minutes before the rocket fires up.
This isn’t just any Falcon 9 mission. The rocket’s first stage, showcasing SpaceX’s commitment to reusability, plans to touch back down on a drone ship at sea roughly 8.5 minutes post-launch. Remarkably, this marks the sixth time this particular Falcon 9 first stage will taste both the edge of space and Earth’s surface.
The Starlink satellites aboard have a special mission. About 62.5 minutes after breaking free from Earth’s pull, they’ll disengage from Falcon 9’s upper stage and begin their duties in LEO. This comes on the heels of another successful Starlink deployment just two days prior from Florida’s Space Coast. Interestingly, that launch equaled SpaceX’s own record – the 17th flight for a Falcon 9 first stage.
Starlink, SpaceX’s brainchild, represents a bold move to dominate internet coverage from space. Already, more than 4,750 satellites form this mega-constellation in LEO. And this count is merely the beginning, as SpaceX envisions a future teeming with many more such satellites.
