SpaceX will launch its one hundredth mission of the 12 months at present (Aug. 7), and you’ll watch the motion reside.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 24 of Amazon’s Project Kuiper web satellites is scheduled to raise off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at present, throughout a 27-minute window that opens at 10:01 a.m. EDT (1401 GMT).
SpaceX will stream the launch reside via its website and X account, starting about quarter-hour earlier than liftoff.
Right this moment’s launch would be the 97th Falcon 9 liftoff of the 12 months already and SpaceX’s one hundredth mission of 2025 general. The opposite three have been suborbital take a look at flights of Starship, the massive, reusable automobile that the corporate is growing to assist humanity settle Mars.
SpaceX additionally operates a 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy, which hasn’t flown since October 2024, when it sent NASA’s Europa Clipper probe towards the Jupiter system.
If SpaceX maintains its present tempo, it should launch about 165 occasions this 12 months. That will break the corporate’s single-year document of 138, which it set in 2024. (Final 12 months’s breakdown: 132 Falcon 9 liftoffs, two Falcon Heavy launches and 4 Starship take a look at flights.)
Greater than 70% of this 12 months’s Falcon 9 launches have been devoted to constructing out Starlink, SpaceX’s broadband megaconstellation in low Earth orbit (LEO). Starlink at present consists of more than 8,100 operational satellites, and it is rising on a regular basis.
Venture Kuiper, Amazon’s model of Starlink, continues to be within the early buildout stage. Right this moment’s launch will probably be simply the fourth Kuiper liftoff up to now and can carry the variety of satellites within the new constellation to 102.
Kuiper will ultimately include over 3,200 spacecraft, which will probably be lofted on greater than 80 launches over the following few years. Quite a lot of rockets will do that work; along with the Falcon 9, Amazon has enlisted Arianespace’s Ariane 6, Blue Origin’s New Glenn and United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V and Vulcan Centaur.
If all goes to plan at present, the Falcon 9’s first stage will return to Earth about 8.5 minutes after liftoff, touching down within the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas.”
Will probably be the debut flight for this explicit booster, in response to a SpaceX mission description. That is fairly uncommon, as the corporate is thought for its rocket reuse; its most-flown Falcon 9 has 29 flights under its belt.
The Falcon 9’s higher stage, in the meantime, will proceed carrying the 24 Venture Kuiper satellites to LEO. They will be deployed over a 7.5-minute span starting about 56 minutes after liftoff, if all goes to plan.