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SpaceX Set to Break Another Falcon 9 Rocket Record Tonight: How to Watch

A single sooty booster will make its 12th trip to space under the light of a nearly full moon late Friday.

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Eric Mack
2 min read
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A weathered Falcon 9 stands ready for launch at Cape Canaveral.

SpaceX

SpaceX and Elon Musk are out to break a record Friday night, and once again it's a record the company's rockets already hold.

When a Falcon 9 carries 53 more Starlink broadband satellites through Earth's atmosphere, the first stage on the rocket will be making its 12th career flight to space, something so far unseen in the history of orbital spaceflight. 

There are currently two boosters in the SpaceX fleet that have made 11 flights each. 

Prior to Falcon 9's arrival on the scene, the practice worldwide for decades was to ditch most spent rockets in the ocean or in other exclusion zones, where most still remain. 

Instead of facing such an ignominious fate, the Falcon 9 booster cataloged as B1051 will lift off from Space Launch Complex-40 in Florida at 8:24 p.m. PT (11:24 p.m. ET) and return to Earth for a landing less than 10 minutes later, just as it has done 11 times before.

It's worth noting that Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic both also have spacecraft that have successfully carried cargo and crew to the edge of space and back to Earth, but neither company has yet performed an orbital launch and landing, a significantly more complicated endeavor. 

The Falcon 9 flying Friday previously carried out eight other Starlink missions, lofted a SiriusXM satellite, a Canadian Radarsat mission and powered the Demo-2 mission that sent two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station. 

After sending the upper stage and the satellites on their way to orbit, the booster will land on the droneship Just Read the Instructions in the Atlantic Ocean. 

This marks the 11th SpaceX launch of 2022 so far and the eighth Starlink mission of the year. 

It will all be livestreamed beginning about 15 minutes before launch and you can follow along in the feed above.