SpaceX will launch fourteen Starlink internet satellites and land the return rocket on Wednesday (March 9th), and you can watch the event live.
two stages Falcon 9 Missile topped with 48 starlink The spacecraft is scheduled to take off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida Wednesday at 8:45 a.m. EDT (13:45 GMT). If all goes according to plan, after about nine minutes, the first stage of the Falcon 9 will descend for a vertical landing on SpaceX Unmanned ship A Shortfall of Gravitas, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean hundreds of miles off the coast of Florida.
You can watch it all live here on Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly through the company. Coverage will start 15 minutes before take off.
Related: Starlink megaconstellation from SpaceX is launched in pictures
There is an 80% chance that the weather will be good enough to allow the launch on Wednesday, According to the 45th Weather Squadron At Patrick’s Space Force base in Florida.
This will be the fourth launch and landing of this first stage of Falcon 9. The booster was also launched ARABSAT -6 A Mission in April 2019, US Army Space Test Program-2 (STP-2) flight in June 2019 and Italian Earth observation satellite COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation FM2 in January 2022.
The first two missions on that list – Arabsat 6A and STP-2 – were flown by the massive SpaceX Falcon Heavy The rocket consists of three Falcon 9 cores strapped together, topped by a second stage. The second generation COSMO-SkyMed FM2 was carried by Falcon 9.
Starlink is the giant constellation of broadband satellites that SpaceX collects in low Earth orbit. The company has already launched over 2,000 Starlink vehicles so far, and more will be coming up in the relatively near future. SpaceX has permission to launch 12,000 Starlink satellites and has applied for approval for up to 30,000 additional satellites.
Starlink provides internet service in many regions around the world, including Ukraine. SpaceX worked on Keep Starlink running in Ukrainewhich suffered interruptions as a result of the Russian invasion that began on February 24.
Wednesday’s launch will already be the 10th of 2022 for SpaceX. Six of the nine that have been completed so far have large batches of Starlink satellites.
Mike Wall is the author of “AbroadBook (Great Grand Publishing House, 2018; illustrated by Carl Tate), a book on the search for extraterrestrials. Follow him on Twitter Tweet embed. Follow us on Twitter Tweet embed or on Facebook.