Live coverage: SpaceX aims for 175th Falcon 9 flight from Cape Canaveral with Monday evening Starlink mission

A Falcon 9 stands ready for the Starlink 6-46 mission from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now.

SpaceX is preparing to launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Monday evening with 23 Starlink satellites on board. This mission will mark the 175th launch for SpaceX from its workhorse pad to date.

Liftoff of the Starlink 6-46 mission is set for 7:42 p.m. EDT (2342 UTC) from Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40). This will also be the 20th mission launching from Florida in 2024.

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about one hour prior to liftoff.

The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, tail number B1078 in the SpaceX fleet, will be launching for an eighth time. It previously launched NASA’s Crew-6 mission, SES’ O3b mPOWER 3 &4 satellites, the USSF-124 mission and four Starlink flights.

About eight-and-a-half minutes after liftoff, B1078 will land on the SpaceX droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’ This will be the 62nd landing on ASOG and the 228th booster landing to date.

SpaceX’s Starlink constellation will expand to 5,680 satellites on orbit, according to numbers tracked by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. More than 6,000 Starlink satellites have launched to date.