SpaceX is preparing to launch 24 Starlink broadband satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base Friday evening on a Falcon 9 rocket launch less than 30 minutes after sunset.
The mission dubbed Starlink 17-7 will be the fourth and final Starlink mission to launch from California in August. SpaceX is targeting liftoff of its Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at 8:08 p.m. PDT (11:08 p.m. EDT / 0308 UTC).
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about 30 minutes prior to liftoff.
SpaceX will launch its Starlink satellites using the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1082, which will fly for a 15th time. It previously flew two national security payloads, a batch of OneWeb broadband Internet satellites and 15 previous batches of Starlink satellites.
Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1082 will target a landing on the drone ship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You.’ If successful, this will be the 147th landing on this vessel and the 496th booster landing to date.
Prior to Friday’s launch, SpaceX launched 27 Starlink missions from Vandenberg in 2025 out of a total of 39 Falcon 9 launches. All told, the company launched 106 orbital missions this year as it aims for 170 such launches by year’s end.
SpaceX continues to bolster its low Earth orbit Starlink constellation as it rolls out the service to more countries and territories around the world. According to numbers tracked by astronomer and expert orbital tracker, Jonathan McDowell, there are more than 8,200 Starlink satellites on orbit.
