SpaceX is about to set a new rocket-reuse record.
One of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets is scheduled to lift off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Wednesday (Dec. 4), during a nearly two-hour window that opens at 5:13 a.m. EST (1013 GMT). The mission will deliver 24 of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO).
It will be the 24th launch for this Falcon 9’s first stage, according to a SpaceX mission description. That will top the old mark of 23 flights, which is held by three different boosters.
SpaceX will webcast the launch live via X, beginning about five minutes before liftoff.
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 its 24th landing about eight minutes after liftoff. It will touch down vertically on the drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas,” which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
The rocket’s upper stage, meanwhile, will deploy the 24 Starlink satellites in LEO about 65 minutes after launch.
Wednesday’s mission will notch yet another milestone for SpaceX’s Falcon rocket family, which consists of the workhorse Falcon 9 and the more powerful Falcon Heavy. SpaceX has launched more than 400 successful Falcon 9 missions to date and has landed Falcon first stages 377 times.
Starlink is the largest satellite constellation ever assembled. It currently consists of more than 6,750 operational satellites, and that number is growing all the time.
