Florida
SpaceX launches Falcon 9 on Starlink mission Tuesday morning at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center
Brevard Space Coast launch sites rockets spaceX ULA NASA
A quick look at which rockets lift off from various Brevard launch sites.
In the Space Coast’s eighth launch of 2025 thus far, a SpaceX Falcon 9 took flight on another Starlink mission early Tuesday morning from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
The Falcon 9 lifted off at 12:24 a.m. EST from pad 39A, ascending into low-Earth orbit to deploy a payload of 21 Starlink internet satellites.
In light of the cold front gripping the Sunshine State, risks of thick cloud layers and cumulus clouds spurred the Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron to spell out unusual variance for a 4½-hour Starlink launch window.
The squadron predicted an 85% chance of favorable weather early during the launch window, which opened at 12:13 a.m. — with those odds dropping off to 40% by the window’s conclusion.
However, no significant Central Florida cloud cover was present at liftoff across the Tampa Bay-Orlando-Space Coast corridor, per a National Weather Service radar loop from the Melbourne Orlando International Airport station shows.
The post-midnight mission marked the Falcon 9 first-stage booster’s eighth flight, SpaceX reported.
The booster previously launched Crew-8, Polaris Dawn, CRS-31, Astranis: From One to Many, and three Starlink missions.
Following stage separation, the booster settled for a landing on the SpaceX drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic Ocean a bit more than eight minutes after liftoff.
Next SpaceX mission targeted for Friday
Next on the Eastern Range schedule, another SpaceX Starlink mission is slated to lift off Friday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, a Federal Aviation Administration operations plan advisory shows.
That Starlink launch window is scheduled to extend from 5:45 p.m. to 10:15 p.m.
For the latest news from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, visit floridatoday.com/space.
Rick Neale is a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Neale at Rneale@floridatoday.com. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1
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