The busiest spaceport in the world is on the verge of achieving another remarkable milestone this Monday night. Weather permitting, the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will mark the 94th launch of an orbital-class rocket from Florida, surpassing the previous record achieved in 2024. This significant mission, known as Starlink 6-87, will successfully deploy an additional 29 broadband internet satellites into SpaceX's expanding mega-constellation in low Earth orbit.
SpaceX has scheduled the liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for 10:21 p.m. EST (0321 UTC). Originally slated for an earlier departure, the launch was postponed by approximately five hours due to restrictions imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration. The agency has limited commercial launches to the hours between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. as a response to a shortage of air traffic controllers during the ongoing government shutdown. This limitation is crucial since launches significantly increase the workload for air traffic controllers, necessitating the diversion of flights from the launch danger area.
The 45th Weather Squadron has indicated a 60 percent chance of favorable conditions during the launch window, despite the arrival of a strong cold front across the state on Monday. Meteorologists have raised concerns about strong winds at liftoff, upper-level wind shear, and less-than-ideal weather conditions in the booster recovery zone near the Bahamas. As stated by launch weather officers, "The front itself will cross the region Monday morning, ushering in a blast of strong northwesterly winds and chilly temperatures that will linger through at least the first half of Tuesday." Thus, the primary concern for the launch window will be the liftoff winds.
For the Starlink 6-87 mission, SpaceX is utilizing the B1096 booster, one of the more recent additions to its fleet. This launch will be its third flight, following missions for Amazon’s Project Kuiper and NASA’s IMAP rideshare earlier this year. Less than eight minutes after liftoff, the B1096 will attempt an autonomous landing on the drone ship, ‘Just Read the Instructions’. If successful, this will mark the 141st landing on this vessel and the 532nd booster landing overall.
For over six years, Florida's spaceport, which includes both NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, has witnessed a steady increase in the number of orbital launches. This trend is largely attributed to a consistent rise in flights from SpaceX. After the Starlink 6-87 mission, SpaceX will have completed 88 launches from its two Falcon launch pads—Launch Complex 39A and Space Launch Complex 40—accounting for nearly 95 percent of all launches originating from Florida’s Space Coast.
The impact of these launches was highlighted in the monthly CEO report delivered by Capt. John Murray to the Port Canaveral Commission on October 22. He reported that during Fiscal Year 2025 (October 1, 2024 – September 30, 2025), the port received 90 boosters and 194 payload fairings, which he described as "quite significant." While the exact figures for “Space Component Recoveries” are not explicitly detailed in the report, these numbers likely reflect components from SpaceX. Spaceflight Now has reached out to Port Canaveral for further clarification on this data.
The ramp-up in launch frequency has necessitated enhanced agility from launch operators like SpaceX and United Launch Alliance, as well as those managing the Eastern Range. In August 2022, just before two simultaneous launches of the SBIRS GEO-6 and Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, it was noted that a double launch day had not occurred in Florida since the 1960s. U.S. Space Force 2nd Lt. Christian Jackson commented on the increased launch cadence, stating, “Just a few years ago, they were launching maybe 12 rockets in a year. We’ve got about 60 plus on the manifest to finish out this year and there are hopes of possibly doing up to 100 launches next year.”
Since then, several double launch days have taken place, with the most recent occurring on September 25, featuring the launches of the Starlink 10-15 mission on a Falcon 9 rocket and the Kuiper Atlas 03 mission on an Atlas 5 551 rocket. Cape leadership is actively working to enhance payload processing facility capacity to accommodate a growing number of missions, including a facility dedicated to Amazon’s Kuiper satellites that came online earlier this year.
