SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch double head may happen on Monday from Florida

Monitor launch schedules: There’s a possible doubleheader of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket liftoffs on Monday coming up from Florida’s Space Coast.

Although the Eastern Range calendar changes frequently, navigation warnings indicate the first Falcon 9 could be launched before sunrise Monday morning — while the second rocket could lift off shortly before midnight.

First of all, a 4½-hour SpaceX Starlink launch window will open from 4:32-9:03 a.m. EST on Monday, a navigation advisory from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency shows. This mission will fly from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Then after dark, a Federal Aviation Administration operational plan advisory shows a second similar Starlink launch window extending from 10:31 p.m. to 3:02 a.m. Tuesday. That liftoff would take place from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Both SpaceX missions will carry payloads of Starlink broadband satellites into low Earth orbit, ascend along southeasterly orbits and target landings atop drone ships hundreds of miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean.

Monday’s double Starlink mission will be the 83rd and 84th orbital rocket launches in 2024 from the Space Coastfurther distancing the ongoing annual total from last year’s short-lived record of 72 launches.

Elsewhere on the Cape, spectators at Jetty Park and Cape Canaveral can now watch Blue Origin’s first New Glenn rocket — which is taller than a football field — standing vertically at the plate at Launch Complex 36 before pre-launch testing. No target launch date has yet been set for this inauguration.

For the latest news from the 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 [email protected]. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1

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