13 hours ago 7

Watch SpaceX launch its record-breaking 133rd Falcon 9 mission of the year today

a black and white rocket launches into a blue sky from a seaside pad

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches the 131-satellite Transporter 12 rideshare mission from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on Jan. 14, 2025. (Image credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX will break one of its launch records today (Oct. 22), and you can watch the action live.

A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 28 of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites is scheduled to lift off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 10:16 a.m. EDT (1416 GMT; 7:16 a.m. local California time). It will be the 133rd Falcon 9 flight of 2025, breaking the mark set by the rocket last year.

SpaceX will stream the launch live via its website and X account, beginning about five minutes before liftoff.

Today's launch will be the 138th overall of 2025 for SpaceX, tying the record the company set in 2024.

Last year, SpaceX launched 132 Falcon 9 flights, two missions of the more powerful Falcon Heavy and four suborbital trials of its Starship megarocket. The Falcon Heavy has not flown yet in 2025; SpaceX's other five missions this year have been Starship test flights.

If all goes according to plan today, the Falcon 9's first stage will come back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after liftoff, landing in the Pacific Ocean on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You."

It will be the 21st launch and touchdown for this particular booster, which is designated 1075. The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, will continue carrying the Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO), deploying them there an hour after launch.

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Today's launch will be the latest in a series of milestones that SpaceX has notched recently. For example, the company launched two Falcon 9 missions on Sunday (Oct. 19); one sent the 10,000th Starlink satellite to LEO, and the other was the record-breaking 31st flight for that particular Falcon 9's first stage.

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Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.