SpaceX delays launch of Starlink satellites from Kennedy Space Center

A Falcon 9 rocket stands at pad 39A for its planned launch with 21 Starlink satellites. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now.

SpaceX scrubbed the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket early Friday for undisclosed reasons. It had been scheduled to loft 21 satellites for the company’s Starlink network.

Liftoff from pad 39A was rescheduled for later on Friday at 9:15 p.m. EDT (0115 UTC). This will be the 28th launch of the company’s internet satellites so far in 2025.

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about an hour before liftoff.

On Thursday, the 45th Weather Squadron forecast an 85 percent chance for favorable weather in the event of a delay to Friday evening.

SpaceX will use the Falcon 9 first stage booster, tail number B1083, for this mission. It will be its 10th flight to space and back after previously launching missions, like the crewed missions of Polaris Dawn and Crew-8 as well as Intuitive Machines’ second Nova-C lunar lander.

A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1083 will target a landing on the droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas. If successful, this will be the 104th booster landing for ASOG and the 429th booster landing to date.

Among the 21 Starlink V2 Mini satellites are 13 that feature Direct to Cell capabilities. To date, SpaceX has launched more than 550 DTC Starlink satellites.



On Thursday, Michael Nicholls, the vice president of Starlink Engineering at SpaceX, shared that the DTC service was newly available to those in Japan in partnership with KDDI, a Japanese telecommunication operator, which has the “au” brand for its mobile phones.

The company said in a post on X that the service would be available to more than six million devices.

SpaceX is also continuing to expand the reach of its satellite internet service. It announced the addition of Guyana on Tuesday and Jordan on Wednesday.