SpaceX rocket aims for late-night launch and landing at Vandenberg SFB | Local News

A number of European internet satellites could fly from Vandenberg Space Force Base on a Falcon 9 rocket as early as this week, with the first stage booster scheduled to return for landing on the Central Coast.

On Saturday, SpaceX scrapped plans for a 11:54 p.m. Sunday launch from Space Launch Complex-4 at South Base.

Vandenberg officials said the countdown has been postponed until Oct. 1 at the earliest. (This story will be updated when SpaceX confirms the time and day of its next launch attempt.

After completing its tasks, the first stage booster, or the lower two-thirds of the vehicle, returns to Vandenberg and lands just west of the launch pad eight minutes after liftoff.

This return will likely result in audible sonic booms in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties.

Falcon will carry 20 OneWeb spacecraft for Eutelsat Group.

The deployment of the satellites begins approximately one hour after departure and ends in 19 minutes.

OneWeb, a constellation of more than 600 satellites, provides broadband Internet services.

Eutelsat says the high speed and low latency will help researchers in Antarctica, for example, where they have had limited access in the past.

In addition to better reliability, OneWeb offers data rates of up to 120 megabits per second, significantly higher than the 1-5 Mbps previously available to researchers.

Vandenberg also saw other OneWeb satellites travel into space on a Falcon 9 rocket for a rideshare mission in May 2023.

For the SpaceX team at Vandenberg, this is the fifth Falcon 9 launch in about a month.

A live webcast of this mission will begin approximately five minutes before launch and can be viewed at www.spacex.com and beyond X @SpaceX (formerly Twitter).