SpaceX plans to launch 22 more Starlink Internet satellites from California early Monday morning (November 20). A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base during a four-hour window that will open at 1:33 a.m. ET on Monday (0633 GMT; 10:33 p.m. California time, Nov. 19).
You can watch the event live on the SpaceX account on X (formerly Twitter). Broadcast will begin approximately five minutes before kick-off. If all goes as planned, the Falcon 9 first stage will return to Earth for a vertical landing approximately 8.5 minutes after launch on the Of Course I Still Love You unmanned spacecraft, which will be deployed in the Pacific Ocean.
This will be the 15th launch and landing of the rocket’s first stage, according to SpaceX’s mission statement. This flight recap includes the Double Asteroid Redirect Test, a NASA mission that successfully crashed the spacecraft into an asteroid in September 2022, along with nine other Starlink launches. Meanwhile, 22 Starlink satellites will be deployed into low Earth orbit approximately 62.5 minutes after launch from the Falcon 9’s upper stage.
Monday morning’s launch will cap off a very busy weekend for SpaceX. The company also launched 23 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Friday night, November 17.
And on Saturday, SpaceX launched the second test flight of Starship, the next-generation giant system it is developing to help people settle on the moon and Mars. Starship initially flew well, reaching a maximum altitude of 91 miles (148 kilometers), but the mission ended about eight minutes after liftoff with a “rapid, unplanned breakup,” SpaceX’s jargon for explosion.
The Monday morning launch was originally planned for Sunday, but the company canceled the attempt after rocket fuel loading began.