SpaceX’s busy 2024 will continue with another launch today (February 20) if all goes as planned. A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch the Merah Putih 2 communications satellite from the Florida Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral today during a two-hour period starting at 3:11 pm ET (2011 GMT).

SpaceX will broadcast the launch live on its own account X, starts approximately 15 minutes before the window opens. The first stage of the Falcon 9 will return to Earth approximately 8.5 minutes after liftoff today and make a vertical landing on the Just Read the Instructions unmanned spacecraft in the Atlantic Ocean.

According to SpaceX’s mission statement, this will be the 17th launch and landing of that launch vehicle. This is less than half of the reuse record the company set in December 2023. Meanwhile, the upper part of the rocket will continue to move skyward, eventually placing Merah Putih 2 into geosynchronous orbit approximately 33.5 minutes after launch.

Once launched, the 8,800-pound (4,000-kilogram) satellite will provide high-speed Internet to customers in Indonesia for the next 15 years. It will be managed by state-owned Indonesian telecommunications company Telkomsat.

Today’s launch will be SpaceX’s 16th launch in 2024. Three of this year’s launches took place within 23 hours between Feb. 14 and Feb. 15, when the company launched the secretive USSF-124 mission for the U.S. Space Force, sent the special IM-1 lunar lander mission into the skies and lifted a number of missiles. their own Starlink satellites. Launch rates could increase in 2024; SpaceX officials said the company plans to launch 144 orbital missions this year.