Watch SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch for record-tying 16th time early Friday morning (Image Credit: Space.com)
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch on its record-tying 16th mission early Friday morning (July 14), and you can watch the action live.
A Falcon 9 topped with 54 of SpaceX‘s Starlink internet satellites is scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Friday at 12:40 a.m. EDT (0440 GMT).
You can watch it here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly via the company. Coverage is expected to start about five minutes before launch.
Related: SpaceX’s Starlink satellite megaconstellation launches in photos
If all goes according to plan, the Falcon 9’s first stage will come back to Earth for a vertical touchdown about 8.5 minutes after launch on the SpaceX droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas.
It will be the 16th launch and landing for this booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. That will tie a record set just last Sunday (July 9) by a different Falcon 9 first stage flying another Starlink mission.
The Falcon 9’s upper stage, which is not reusable, will continue hauling the 54 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit on Friday morning, ultimately deploying them about 66 minutes after liftoff.
The Starlink launch will kick off a busy day in spaceflight, if all goes according to plan. About 4.5 hours after the Falcon 9 lifts off, India plans to launch its robotic Chandrayaan 3 mission, which aims to pull off the country’s first-ever soft landing on the moon next month.
And on Friday afternoon, a Rocket Lab Electron launcher will send seven small satellites skyward from the company’s New Zealand site. Rocket Lab is working to make the Electron’s first stage reusable, and Friday’s mission, called “Baby Come Back,” includes a planned recovery of the booster from the Pacific Ocean.
