SpaceX Starlink’s next launch set to hit a big milestone: how to watch Saturday

SpaceX aims to launch its 16th batch of its Starlink broadband satellites on Saturday, which looks like a busy day for Elon Musk’s company.

Boosting a new set of its routers in orbit has become a matter of routine for SpaceX as it works on build a mega-constellation
with thousands of individual satellites in low earth orbit. But this mission is to put some feathers in Musk’s cap.

The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket is expected to make its seventh flight, which would set a rocket recycling record for the company. The booster has previously flown on four Starlink missions and a pair of larger telecommunications satellite launches.

SpaceX will likely attempt to land the booster on a dronehip in the Atlantic shortly after launch and may also attempt to grab the two halves of the nose cone or fairing with another pair of ships.

All of this happens around 10 hours after SpaceX is scheduled to perform another big launch across the country. On Saturday morning, another Falcon 9 will take off from Vandenburg Air Force Base in California, carrying NASA / European Space Agency’s new Michael Freilich satellite Sentinel 6 designed to monitor global sea level rise and improve forecasts meteorological.

This launch is currently scheduled for 9:17 a.m. PST and you can find more information about the mission in our previous coverage.

Starlink’s Saturday night launch is scheduled for 7:17 p.m. Pacific Time (10:17 p.m. ET) Saturday. You can watch it all here. We’ll add the livestream to this post as soon as it’s available.