![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/20260606_Starshield.jpeg\")
A partial view of a SpaceX Starshield satellite in low Earth orbit. Image: SpaceX<\/p>\nA partial view of a SpaceX Starshield satellite in low Earth orbit. Image: SpaceX<\/p>\n
SpaceX is preparing to launch a combination of 21 Starlink and two Starshield satellites on Saturday night from Vandenberg Space Force Base.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Starshield is an alternate version of the Starlink satellite architecture the government. SpaceX hasn\u2019t announced which U.S. government agency ordered these two satellites or if they are for a foreign government.<\/p>\n
Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket on the Starlink 17-43 mission from Space Launch Complex 4 East is scheduled for 9:24:30 p.m. PDT on Saturday, June 6 (12:24:30 a.m. EDT \/ 0424:30 UTC on Sunday, June 7).<\/p>\n
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about 30 minutes prior to liftoff.<\/p>\n
\ufeff<\/p>\n
SpaceX will fly the mission using the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1097. This will be its tenth flight after launching NROL-172, the Twilight rideshare, and seven batches of Starlink satellites.<\/p>\n
A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1097 will target a landing on the drone ship, \u2018Of Course I Still Love You.\u2019 If successful, this will be the 201st landing on this vessel and the 620th booster landing to date.<\/p>\n
While never publicly declared by the National Reconnaissance Office, the 13 launches supporting its \u201cmulti-phenomenology proliferated architecture\u201d satellite constellation are believed to consist of Starshield satellites. In April 2024, Reuters reported<\/a> that Northrop Grumman \u201cis providing sensors for some of the SpaceX satellites.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2025, SpaceX launched two missions, Starlink 13-1 and Starlink 13-4, which reportedly included two Starshield satellites each as well, similar to the upcoming Starlink 17-43 mission. Those satellites, logged by the U.S. Space Force as USA 485, 486, 549, and 550, have also not been publicly connected to a specific part of the U.S. government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A partial view of a SpaceX Starshield satellite in low Earth orbit. Image: SpaceX SpaceX is preparing to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[79,193],"class_list":["post-688528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}