SpaceX launching 23 Starlink satellites from Florida this evening (Image Credit: Space.com)
The Starlink launches just keep on coming.
A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 23 of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites is scheduled to lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida today (April 17) during a four-hour window that opens at 5:26 p.m. EDT (2126 GMT).
You can watch it live via SpaceX‘s account on X. Coverage will begin about five minutes before the window opens.
Related: Starlink satellite train: How to see and track it in the night sky
If all goes according to plan, the Falcon 9’s first stage will come back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after launch, landing vertically on SpaceX’s Just Read the Instructions droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
It will be the 12th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. That’s eight shy of the company’s reuse record, which it set on a Starlink mission just last week.
The Falcon 9’s upper stage will continue carrying the 23 Starlink satellites toward low Earth orbit (LEO), eventually deploying them there about 65 minutes after liftoff.
This evening’s launch will be the 39th orbital mission of the year already for SpaceX, and the 26th of 2024 devoted to building out the Starlink network.
The megaconstellation currently consists of more than 5,700 operational satellites, and that number will continue growing far into the future. SpaceX has permission to deploy 12,000 Starlink craft in LEO, and it has applied for approval for another 30,000 on top of that.
