Florida's Space Coast is poised for its 99th orbital launch of 2025 on Tuesday, Nov. 18, as SpaceX prepares another Starlink broadband-satellite mission.
Launch window: 6:29 p.m. to 10:29 p.m. ET from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Mission profile: A SpaceX Falcon 9 will climb on a southeast heading. After first-stage separation, the booster is scheduled to return to the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas stationed in the Atlantic Ocean for a landing attempt.
Launch activity from Cape Canaveral and the neighboring Kennedy Space Center has ramped up sharply over the past decade. Space Florida records show roughly 10 orbital launches per year from 2011–2013, rising to 31 launches in both 2020 and 2021. The pace accelerated with the growth of Starlink missions: 57 launches in 2022, 72 in 2023 and 93 in 2024.
Recent headline-making flights include Blue Origin's New Glenn launch of NASA's ESCAPADE mission (with a successful first-stage recovery on the drone ship Jacklyn) on Nov. 13, and a United Launch Alliance Atlas V that deployed a Viasat communications satellite the same night — pushing the year's total past 95. SpaceX then completed a Falcon 9 doubleheader on Nov. 14–15, registering launches No. 97 and 98.
According to a Federal Aviation Administration operations-plan advisory, Florida's 100th orbital liftoff of 2025 is planned for Thursday, Nov. 20. That milestone mission is listed to launch from Kennedy Space Center's Pad 39A during a window from 10:01 p.m. to 2:44 a.m. ET and is expected to carry 29 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit. The advisory indicates a southeast trajectory and notes that sonic booms are not expected.
For live coverage, Florida Today will begin its Space Team broadcast 90 minutes before liftoff at floridatoday.com/space. Rick Neale is the Space Reporter covering these launches; contact: Rneale@floridatoday.com.
Why it matters: The rapid cadence of launches from the Space Coast underscores how commercial fleets — particularly SpaceX's Starlink program — are reshaping launch tempo and infrastructure use in Florida, driving both record annual counts and an expanding launch ecosystem.
