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SpaceX plans to launch 52 more of its Starlink internet satellites to orbit early Wednesday morning (May 31), and you can watch the action live.
A Falcon 9 rocket topped with the 52 Starlink spacecraft is scheduled to lift off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on Wednesday at 2:02 a.m. EDT (0602 GMT; 11:02 p.m. on May 30 local California time).
Watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly via the company. Coverage is expected to begin about five minutes before launch.
Related: Starlink satellite train: How to see in the night sky
If all goes according to plan, the Falcon 9’s first stage will return to Earth about 8 minutes and 45 seconds after launch on Wednesday. It will make a vertical touchdown on the SpaceX droneship Of Course I Still Love You, which will be stationed in the Pacific Ocean.
It will be the 14th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. Among its previous 13 flights were Crew-1 and Crew-2, astronaut missions that SpaceX flew to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA.
The Falcon 9’s upper stage, meanwhile, will haul the 52 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit, ultimately deploying them all about 17.5 minutes after launch.
SpaceX has now launched nearly 4,500 Starlink satellites, more than 4,100 of which are currently active, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.
But many more will go up in the coming weeks and months. The company already has permission to send 12,000 Starlink satellites to orbit, and it has applied for approval to launch another 30,000 on top of that.
Wednesday’s Starlink launch will come just a few hours after a SpaceX Dragon capsule returns to Earth. That spacecraft, named Freedom, flew the private Ax-2 astronaut mission to the space station for Houston company Axiom Space. Freedom undocked from the ISS on Tuesday morning (May 30) and is expected to splash down off the Florida coast that same day Tuesday night, at 11:05 p.m. EDT (0305 GMT on May 31).
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