SpaceX launches Falcon 9 carrying OneWeb broadband communications satellites from Florida

LAKE MARY, Fla. - SpaceX successfully completes its second Florida launch of 2023 late Monday night. 

A Falcon rocket carried 40 satellites for the broadband communications company OneWeb into orbit from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at around 10 minutes to midnight.

Following stage separation, the first stage landed on Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.  The first stage booster supporting this mission previously launched CRS-26 Following stage separation.

This is SpaceX's second launch for OneWeb, which is putting hundreds of satellites into low earth orbit for low-latency broadband communications.

Last week, the space company kicked off its Florida launch schedule for 2023 with the Transporter-6 mission.

It has been a busy start to the week for SpaceX.  Earlier Monday, a Dragon cargo capsule undocked from the International Space Station loaded with several tons of scientific cargo for analysis, the space company said. It will return to Earth on Wednesday morning off the coast of Florida.  Dragon arrived at the station Nov. 27, 2022, as SpaceX’s 26th Commercial Resupply Services mission for NASA, delivering more than 7,700 pounds of research investigations, crew supplies, and station hardware. It was launched on Nov. 26 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy.

SpaceX was also planning a Tuesday night launch of 51 Starlink satellites from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The instantaneous launch window is at 8:02 p.m. PT.  The launch was initially slated for Monday evening as well but was delayed a day. Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage will return to Earth and land on the "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship stationed in the Pacific Ocean.