SpaceX to launch Falcon 9 in a record-setting mission on September 11; how to watch live?

SpaceX is targeting September 11 for the launch of its next mission which includes two different payloads. The Falcon 9 rocket will liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center with 34 Starlink satellites along with AST SpaceMobile’s BlueWalker 3 satellite at 6:40 am IST. According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, this would be one of the most complex missions as it involves several precise orbital burns to insert the satellites into the desired orbit. 

About nine minutes after the launch, the Falcon 9's first stage booster will make its landing at the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. On the other hand, the second stage of the rocket would power the payload and deploy the Blue Walker 3 satellite within an hour of the launch followed by the deployment of all Starlink satellites around 90 minutes after liftoff. SpaceX says that the rocket would carry out five orbital burns, more than any satellite mission to date.

You can watch the launch on the official social media handles of SpaceX when the webcast begins ten minutes prior to the lift-off. 

Falcon 9 to set another reusability record

Meanwhile, the mission would also see the Falcon booster set another reusability record as it will fly for the 14th time. According to SpaceX, this particular booster has been used to launch eight previous Starlink missions, ANASIS-II, the satellite mission for the South Korean military in July 2020, the Transporter-1 and Transporter 3 rideshare flights in January 2021 and January 2022 and the historic crew Demo-2 mission.

Demo-2 was SpaceX's first crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS) following which the company has continued to bag multi-billion contracts from NASA for astronaut transportation. Earlier this month, NASA announced that it has chosen SpaceX for five additional ISS missions through 2030 under a contract worth $1.4 billion. SpaceX's next astronaut mission is Crew-5 which is scheduled for October followed by Crew-6 targeted for launch next year. Earlier in April, the Crew-4 mission was launched to the space station but will soon return to vacate the orbital outpost for Crew-5 astronauts after six months in October.