19.10.2025
Expect sunny skies for SpaceX's Sunday Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
The countdown to 100 continues: SpaceX is targeting Sunday, Oct. 19, to launch the 87th orbital rocket of the year from Florida's Space Coast.
This midday four-hour launch window extends from 10:52 a.m. to 2:52 p.m. SpaceX will send up a Falcon 9 rocket on another Starlink mission from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The National Weather Service forecast indicates excellent viewing conditions for launch spectators. Expect sunny skies Sunday with a high near 85 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, coupled with a light south-southeast wind of 5 to 10 mph.
The Falcon 9 will follow a northeasterly trajectory and deploy 28 Starlink internet satellites into low-Earth orbit. The first-stage booster will target landing on SpaceX's drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic Ocean.
SpaceX's last Starlink launch from the Cape occurred before sunrise Thursday, Oct. 16. That mission marked the 500th landing of a Falcon 9 rocket after the booster touched down atop SpaceX's drone ship Just Read the Instructions out at sea.
Looking ahead on the Eastern Range schedule, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will lift two Airbus-developed satellites into orbit on the SpainSat NG-II mission. That nighttime launch window will last nearly four hours, opening at 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 22, and extending until 1:19 a.m. Thursday.
Quelle: Florida Today
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SpaceX to launch nearly 30 Starlink satellites
CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE FORCE STATION — With not a worry in sight (at the moment), the weather is looking good as SpaceX is preparing for another Starlink launch on Sunday morning.
The Falcon 9 rocket will send up Starlink 10-17 mission from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, stated SpaceX.
The launch window will open at 10:52 a.m. ET to 2:52 p.m. ET. That means SpaceX needs to launch during that timeframe.
On Friday afternoon, the 45th Weather Squadron gave a 95% chance of good liftoff conditions and with no primary concerns, which is rare.
About the mission
Once deployed and in their low-Earth orbit, the Starlink company’s 28 satellites will join the thousands already there and provide internet service to many parts of Earth.
SpaceX owns the Starlink company.
Dr. Jonathan McDowell, of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has been documenting Starlink satellites.
Before this launch, McDowell recorded the following:
- 8,626 are in orbit
- 7,455 are in operational orbit
Quelle: SPECTRUM NEWS13
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Watch SpaceX launch its 10,000th Starlink satellite to orbit today on rocket's record-breaking 31st flight
SpaceX will hit two big milestones on a single Falcon 9 launch today (Oct. 19).
SpaceX will notch two big milestones on a single Falcon 9 launch today (Oct. 19), and you can watch the action live.
A Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch 28 of SpaceX's Starlink broadband satellites from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today, during a four-hour window that opens at 10:52 a.m. EDT (1452 GMT).
SpaceX has lofted 9,988 Starlink satellites to date, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell. So today's launch will take that number above 10,000. It will also be the record-breaking 31st liftoff for this Falcon 9's first stage, a booster designated 1067.
SpaceX launched its first two Starlink prototypes to low Earth orbit (LEO) in February 2018, then began building the megaconstellation in earnest 15 months later. The company offered Starlink service for the first time with a public beta test in October 2020 and started a commercial rollout the next year.
Starlink now provides service to millions of customers around the world, and SpaceX continues to beef up that product by sending more and more satellites to the final frontier.
The pace has reached extraordinary levels lately: SpaceX launched 89 Starlink missions in 2024 and has already exceeded that number this year. And don't expect it to stop anytime soon: SpaceX already has permission to loft 12,000 Starlink satellites, and the megaconstellation could eventually consist of more than 30,000 spacecraft.
Most of the 9,988 Starlink satellites that SpaceX has launched to date remain active — 8,610 are currently operational, according to McDowell. Most of the others have been deorbited, guided down to burn up in Earth's atmosphere. (Each Starlink satellite has an operational life of about five years.)
If all goes according to plan today, Booster 1067 will come back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after liftoff, landing in the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas." It will be the 31st launch and touchdown for the booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.
Such extensive rocket reuse is a core part of SpaceX's plan to lower the cost of spaceflight and increase its efficiency.
That already-successful strategy could take a big leap forward soon; the company is developing a giant, fully reusable rocket called Starship, which is designed to help humanity settle Mars. (The Falcon 9 and its close cousin the Falcon Heavy are only partially reusable; their upper stages are expendable.)
The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, will haul the 28 Starlink satellites to LEO today, deploying them about 64 minutes after launch.
Quelle: SC
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SpaceX launches a Falcon 9 rocket on record-breaking 31st flight
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to begin the Starlink 10-17 mission. This was the record-breaking 31st flight of Falcon 9 booster, 1067.
SpaceX broke another reuse record on Sunday when it launched a Falcon 9 booster for a 31st time.
The company’s most flown rocket was used to launch the Starlink 10-17 mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 happened at 1:39 p.m. EDT (1739 UTC) towards the end of Sunday’s four-hour launch window.
The 45th Weather Squadron forecast a greater than 95 percent chance for favorable weather during the launch window. Meteorologists said there were no weather phenomena that they anticipate interfering with the flight.
B1067 is the tail number of the booster that set a new benchmark for SpaceX on this mission. It most recently flew on Aug. 28 on the Starlink 10-11 mission.
Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, SpaceX landed B1067 on its drone ship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’ This was the 129th booster landing on this vessel and the 520th landing for SpaceX to date.
SpaceX is working to certify its Falcon boosters for up to 40 launches and landings. The majority of these flagship moment launches feature its own Starlink satellites as the payload.
To illustrate that, the last seven flights of B1067 have all been for the Starlink satellite constellation. The Starlink 10-17 mission will add another 28 such satellites to low Earth orbit.
The last launch that flew from SLC-40, Starlink 10-52, marked a pad turnaround record, according to Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s vice president of launch at SpaceX. He said marked a couple of milestones:
- Fastest launch-to-launch from the same American launch pad – 55h 29m 9s
- Fastest transporter erector roll into hangar for booster integration to launch – 12h 5m 20s
“I’m confident the @SpaceX Falcon team will pull off a sub 48 hour launch to launch turn from Pad 40 this year,” Dontchev wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “We still have some work to do best the world record the Soviets in 1962 with Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 from the same pad in 24 hours (two different ground launch systems so not totally apples to apples, but nonetheless the record!)”
Quelle: SN