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SpaceX will launch 53 of its Starlink internet satellites to orbit early Thursday morning (Feb. 2), and you can watch the action live.
A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 53 Starlink craft is scheduled to lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday at 2:43 a.m. EST (0743 GMT).
Watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly via the company (opens in new tab). Coverage is expected to begin about five minutes before launch.
Related: 10 weird things about SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites
If all goes according to plan, the Falcon 9’s first stage will come down for a vertical landing at sea on SpaceX’s droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas around eight minutes and 45 seconds after launch.
It will be the fifth liftoff and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description (opens in new tab). The rocket also launched another big batch of Starlink satellites (the company did not say which one, and there have been many); SpaceX’s CRS-24 cargo mission to the International Space Station in December 2021; Eutelsat’s Hotbird 13F telecom satellite in October 2022; and the OneWeb 1 flight in December 2022.
OneWeb 1 sent 40 internet satellites to orbit for OneWeb. The London-based company signed launch contracts with SpaceX and the commercial arm of India’s national space agency after its deal to fly on Russian-built Soyuz rockets fell apart last year in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
SpaceX has now launched two missions for OneWeb; the second lifted off on Jan. 9.
Thursday’s launch will be the eighth of 2023 already for SpaceX and its fourth of the year devoted to Starlink, the company’s huge and ever-growing constellation of broadband satellites.
SpaceX has launched more than 3,800 Starlink satellites (opens in new tab) to date. But the company has permission to loft 12,000 of the internet craft, and it has applied for approval to deploy an additional 30,000 Starlink satellites on top of that.
All Starlink satellites to date have flown aboard Falcon 9 rockets, but that could change soon. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said that the company will rely primarily on its huge Starship vehicle to loft the larger next-generation Starlink 2.0 spacecraft.
Starship remains in development, but it could make its debut orbital test flight soon, perhaps by the end of February.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).
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