Live coverage: SpaceX to launch Falcon 9 rocket from California carrying 22 Starlink satellites

A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to liftoff from the West Coast with another batch of satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink network at 12:03 a.m. PST Friday (2:03 a.m. EST / 0803 UTC).

The Starlink 7-8 mission will liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and depart on a south-easterly direction, targeting a 183×178 mile (295×286 km) orbit, inclined at 53 degrees to the equator.

Spaceflight Now will provide live coverage of Falcon 9 liftoff in our Launch Pad Live stream.

The first stage booster, making its 13th flight, previously launched the NROL-87, NROL-85, SARah-1, SWOT, Transporter-8, Transporter-9 missions. Plus six previous Starlink delivery missions. After completing its burn, the first stage will land on the drone ship ‘Of Course I still Love You’ stationed about 400 miles downrange (644km) in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California.

If all goes according to plan, deployment of the 22 Starlink satellites will occur just over an hour after launch. This will be the 40th launch for a batch of the V2 Mini Starlink model since it was introduced earlier this year. This new version is much larger than the previous V1.5 satellites and is equipped with upgraded antennae and larger solar panels, and are capable of delivering four times more bandwidth.

SpaceX recently announced earlier this year it had signed up over two million subscribers in more than 60 countries for its Starlink internet service. Since 2019 it has launched 5,559 satellites according to statistics compiled by Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who maintains a space flight database. Of those satellites 5,186 remain in orbit and 5,147 appear to be working normally.