SpaceX Targets Monday Dawn for Bandwagon-5 Rideshare Launch Carrying More Than 30 Payloads
SpaceX is targeting the morning of Monday, October 19, for its Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. A Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Launch Complex 40 will carry more than 30 payloads to low-Earth orbit during a one-hour launch window opening at 6:30 a.m. ET, flying a southeasterly trajectory.
According to Florida Today, Exolaunch, a Berlin-based launch-mission management firm, will deploy 23 customer satellites on the mission. The first-stage booster, flying its 19th mission, is scheduled to land on the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic Ocean after stage separation, so no sonic booms are expected along Florida's east-central coast.
The launch would be the 60th orbital launch of 2026 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and the neighboring Kennedy Space Center. The Cape's most recent launch was NASA's SpaceX CRS-35 cargo mission on the morning of October 13, which sent a Dragon spacecraft carrying more than 6,300 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station and produced a glowing "space jellyfish" in the dawn sky. The previous mission in the series, Bandwagon-4, launched from the Cape on November 2, 2025, carrying 18 payloads.
In a press release, Exolaunch said that as the global satellite market grows, access to launch remains a complex operational bottleneck, with satellite operators also having to navigate mission planning, technical interfaces, environmental testing, integration, international logistics and regulatory requirements.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：猎鹰9号火箭在卡纳维拉尔角40号发射台转运途中（资料图）。图片来源：SpaceX，Wikimedia Commons，CC0。Photo: A Falcon 9 rocket during rollout at Launch Complex 40, Cape Canaveral (file photo). Source: SpaceX, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
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