SpaceX aims to launch a Falcon 9 rocket with a batch of Starlink V2 mini satellites on Tuesday afternoon. The flight from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station will be the 18th launch of the year supporting the company’s broadband Internet satellite constellation.
The Starlink 6-110 mission will send another 29 satellites into low Earth orbit. Before liftoff, SpaceX had more than 9,700 Starlink satellites in space, according to data maintained by expert orbital tracker and astronomer, Jonathan McDowell.
Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 is scheduled for 6:04:10 p.m. EST (2304:10 UTC). The Falcon 9 rocket will launch on a south-easterly trajectory after taking off from Florida’s Space Coast.
Spaceflight Now’s live coverage will begin approximately one hour before flight.
The 45th Weather Squadron estimated a greater than 95 percent chance of favorable weather at liftoff with no specific weather concerns.
“High pressure will continue to build across the peninsula overnight and into tomorrow, creating ideal conditions for the launch window,” launch weather officials wrote.
SpaceX will launch the mission using its Falcon 9 first stage booster with tail number 1092. This will be its 10th flight, following previous missions including CRS-32, NROL-69 and USSF-36.
Just over eight minutes after takeoff, B1092 will aim for a landing on ‘Just Read the Instructions’, a drone ship located in the Atlantic Ocean northeast of the Bahamas. If successful, it will be the 151st landing on this spacecraft and the 576th booster landing ever for SpaceX.
price increases
SpaceX’s biggest selling point for the reusability of its Falcon 9 booster and payload fairing is that it reduces the overall cost of launching payloads into space. However, this does not mean that the company will not raise its prices.
The company updated its Falcon 9 rocket capabilities and services page. It now says a standard payment plan for launching a Falcon 9 rocket up to 5.5 metric tons to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) is $74 million by 2026, up from $70 million in 2025.
In 2022, SpaceX listed Falcon 9 launches with the same payload capacity at $67 million, citing a possible increase in prices in the future due to inflation.
As Ars Technica reported earlier this month, SpaceX’s internal cost to launch a reusable Falcon 9 rocket is $15 million.
For comparison, another rocket that aims to compete with the Falcon 9 in the future is Rocket Lab’s Neutron rocket. In a Q1 earnings call in May 2025, company CEO Peter Beck said the company expects a dedicated flight of its reusable rocket to be worth in the region of $55 million.
Pricing for other rockets may be harder to determine, but for a rocket like Blue Origin’s New Glenn, which can carry 13 metric tons to GTO, it is estimated to cost about $68 million per flight. NASA paid only $20 to fly its EscaPADE mission in November 2025, which carried more risk because it was the rocket’s second flight ever.
