Live coverage: SpaceX to launch 600th Falcon 9 rocket to date with Starlink flight from Vandenberg

SpaceX continues its busy weekend with the launch of its 600th Falcon 9 rocket to date. The milestone mission comes hours after its Dragon spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station as part of its 20th human spaceflight mission.

The Starlink 17-13 mission is set to launch Saturday evening from Vandenberg Space Force Base. It will send 24 Starlink V2 Mini satellites into low Earth orbit.

Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East is scheduled for 5:58:50 p.m. PST (8:58:50 p.m. EST / 0158:50 UTC), at the end of the launch window. The rocket will fly on a southerly trajectory upon leaving the pad.

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about 30 minutes prior to liftoff.

SpaceX will launch the mission using the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number 1081. This will be its 22nd flight after launching four missions for NASA (Crew-7, CRS-29, PACE, and TRACERS) among others.

More than eight minutes after liftoff, B1081 will target a landing on the drone ship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You,’ positioned in the Pacific Ocean. If successful, this will be the the 178th landing on this vessel and the 571st booster landing to date for SpaceX.

Earlier in the day, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft named Freedom arrived at the ISS at 3:15 p.m. EST (2015 UTC). The orbital arrival of three astronauts and one cosmonaut came roughly 34 hours after launching from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.