SpaceX is set to launch 22 Starlink internet satellites from Florida tonight (Nov. 17), on the first of two planned missions in a three-hour span.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station tonight during a four-hour window that opens at 11:00 p.m. EDT (0400 GMT on Nov. 18).
You can watch the action live via SpaceX’s account on X (formerly known as Twitter). Coverage is expected to begin about five minutes before launch.
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 for a vertical landing about 8.5 minutes after launch on the drone ship Just Read the Instructions, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
It will be the 11th launch and landing for this rocket’s first stage, according to a SpaceX mission description.
The 23 Starlink satellites, meanwhile, will deploy from the Falcon 9’s upper stage into low Earth orbit about 65.5 minutes after liftoff.
RELATED STORIES:
Tonight’s launch is the first of two planned Starlink missions in a roughly three-hour span. SpaceX also aims to loft 22 of the broadband satellites from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on Saturday (Nov. 18) at 1:55 a.m. EDT (0555 GMT; 10:55 p.m. local time Friday in California).
And these two missions will serve as a prelude to something even more exciting: SpaceX plans to launch the second-ever test flight of its huge Starship rocket on Saturday from its South Texas site, during a 20-minute window that opens at 8 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT). You can watch that highly anticipated flight live here at Space.com when the time comes.
