{"id":785121,"date":"2026-07-07T02:15:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T02:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/785121\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T02:15:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T02:15:22","slug":"watch-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-launch-81-satellites-early-on-july-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/785121\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch 81 satellites early on July 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

SpaceX will launch a passel of satellites to orbit early Tuesday morning (July 7), and you can watch the action live.<\/p>\n

A Falcon 9<\/a> rocket carrying 81 payloads is scheduled to lift off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base<\/a> on Tuesday, during a 95-minute window that opens at 3:10 a.m. EDT (0410 GMT; 12:10 a.m. local California time).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

You can watch the mission, which is called Transporter-17, live via SpaceX<\/a>. Coverage will begin about 15 minutes before launch.<\/p>\n

As its name suggests, Transporter-17 will be the 17th mission of SpaceX<\/a>‘s Transporter rideshare program. The company operates another rideshare series as well, called Bandwagon, which has launched four missions to date<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 20 Transporter and Bandwagon missions that have flown to date sent more than 1,800 payloads to Earth orbit. Transporter-1 lofted 143 of those back in January 2021<\/a>, which remains the global single-launch record.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

The 81 payloads going up on Transporter-17 include “cubesats, microsats, hosted payloads and orbital transfer vehicles carrying eight of those payloads to be deployed at a later time,” SpaceX wrote in a mission description<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the biggest satellite riding the Falcon 9 on Tuesday is CAS500-4, a South Korean Earth-observation craft that tips the scales at about 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms).<\/p>\n

\"Space\"<\/p>\n

The satellite, whose name is short for “Compact Advanced Satellite 500-4,” will be the fourth member of a planned five-satellite CAS500 fleet<\/a> in low Earth orbit<\/a> (LEO). CAS500-4 will help the South Korean government monitor crops and forests<\/a>, among other tasks.<\/p>\n

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\"a\n<\/p>\n

A long-exposure view of the Transporter-16 launch on March 30, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)<\/p>\n

If all goes according to plan on Tuesday morning, the Falcon 9’s first stage will land about 8.5 minutes after launch on the SpaceX droneship “Of Course I Still Love You,” which will be stationed in the Pacific Ocean. It will be the 11th flight for this particular booster, according to the company’s Transporter-17 mission description.<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9’s upper stage, meanwhile, will haul the 81 payloads to LEO, where they’ll be deployed starting about 50.5 minutes after launch. CAS500-4 won’t be released until nearly 2.5 hours after liftoff.<\/p>\n

Transporter-17 will be the 79th Falcon 9 launch of 2026. Nearly 80% of this year’s missions have been devoted to building out Starlink<\/a>, SpaceX’s giant broadband constellation in LEO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SpaceX will launch a passel of satellites to orbit early Tuesday morning (July 7), and you can watch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,66,306],"class_list":["post-785121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}