SpaceX plans to launch another big batch of its Starlink satellites to orbit Friday night (Sept. 16), and you can watch the action live.
SpaceX plans to loft 54 more Starlink broadband satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida Friday at 9:05 p.m. EDT (0105 GMT on Sept. 17). You can watch here at Space.com, or directly via SpaceX (opens in new tab).
The flight plan calls for a Falcon 9 rocket to carry the Starlink Group 4-34 satellites into space, and for the first stage of the rocket to land on the Just Read the Instructions droneship in the Atlantic Ocean about nine minutes later. It will be the sixth launch and landing for this particular booster, SpaceX wrote in a mission description (opens in new tab).
Related: SpaceX’s Starlink megaconstellation launches in photos
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Starlink is SpaceX’s broadband constellation of satellites. The company has lofted more than 3,200 of the satellites into orbit so far. SpaceX is rapidly expanding the constellation, with launches happening pretty much every week — and sometimes more often than that.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently said he hopes to launch up to 100 SpaceX missions in 2023. The goal is, in part, to ramp up Starlink service as fast as possible for the remote customers that the company wants to serve.
SpaceX already has regulatory approval to launch 12,000 Starlink satellites. The company has also applied to an international regulator to send another 30,000 of the satellites into orbit.
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The company is also expanding the types of customers that are accessing Starlink services.
SpaceX recently announced a collaboration with T-Mobile to beam broadband service directly to cell phones. Additionally, SpaceX signed with Royal Caribbean to offer Starlink on cruise ships, to improve Internet service at sea.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 9:45 p.m. ET on Sept. 13 with the new launch date of Sept. 14. SpaceX had planned to launch the mission on Sept. 13 but scrubbed the attempt due to weather. It was updated again at 8:50 p.m. ET on Sept. 14 with the new launch date of Sept. 15. Bad weather scrubbed the planned Sept. 14 attempt as well. It was updated again on Sept. 15, after bad weather forced another scrub.
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