SpaceX set to launch 23 Starlink satellites from Florida tonight

SpaceX set to launch 23 Starlink satellites from Florida tonight

long-exposure shot of the yellow-orange arc a spacex falcon 9 rocket launch carved into the night sky.



A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 23 Starlink satellites on Nov. 7, 2023.
(Image credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX plans to launch 23 more Starlink internet satellites to orbit from Florida tonight (Nov. 21), continuing a busy stretch for the company.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station during a nearly four-hour window that opens at 11:01 p.m. EDT (0401 GMT on Nov. 22). 

You can watch the action live via SpaceX’s account on X (formerly known as Twitter), beginning about five minutes before the launch window opens.

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 named “A Shortfall of Gravitas,” which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

This will be the 15th launch and landing for the particular booster used, according to a SpaceX mission description. That resume includes six other Starlink flights as well as Crew-3 and Crew-4, which were astronaut missions to the International Space Station that launched for NASA in November 2021 and April 2022, respectively. 

The 23 Starlink satellites are scheduled to deploy from the Falcon 9’s upper stage into low Earth orbit about 65.5 minutes after liftoff.

SpaceX has been quite busy recently — though these days, that statement applies pretty much all the time for the company.

SpaceX launched 23 Starlink satellites on Friday (Nov. 17), conducted the highly anticipated second test flight of its next-gen Starship rocket on Saturday (Nov. 18) and sent 22 more Starlinks up early Monday morning (Nov. 20).

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Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, “Out There,” was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.

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