SpaceX plans to launch another batch of its Starlink internet satellites early Wednesday morning (Feb. 7).
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 22 Starlink spacecraft is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Wednesday during a 37-minute window that opens at 12:01 a.m. EST (0501 GMT; 9:01 p.m. local California time on Feb. 6).
SpaceX will livestream the launch via its 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 liftoff for a landing on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, which will be stationed in the Pacific Ocean.
It will be the 14th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. Seven of its 13 previous flights were Starlink missions.
Starlink is SpaceX’s broadband megaconstellation in low Earth orbit, which currently consists of nearly 5,400 operational spacecraft. That number is growing all the time, as Wednesday morning’s planned liftoff shows.
This Starlink launch will be the 11th orbital mission of the year for SpaceX. And there will be many more to come; the company aims to launch 144 missions in 2024.
