SpaceX Flies Bandwagon-5 Rideshare at Dawn With 32 Payloads Including the Starfall Capsule
SpaceX is set to fly its Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission this morning: a Falcon 9 will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida in a one-hour window opening at 6:30 a.m. ET, with a backup opportunity in the same window on October 20. SpaceX said on October 17 that all 32 payloads had been encapsulated in the fairing.
The first-stage booster, B1085, is flying for the 19th time; its earlier missions include NASA's Crew-9, Firefly's Blue Ghost Mission 1 and the private Fram2 crewed flight. About nine minutes after liftoff the booster is to land on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic. The trajectory runs southeast and will not produce sonic booms over land.
German launch-services firm Exolaunch will deploy 23 of the customer satellites. Also aboard is SpaceX's own Starfall reentry capsule, which first flew on a demonstration mission on June 23. The previous Bandwagon-4 mission, flown on November 2, 2025, carried 18 payloads.
The flight is Florida's 60th launch of 2026. Because liftoff falls just before sunrise at 7:25 a.m., sunlight may illuminate the rocket's exhaust plume into the glowing "space jellyfish" effect visible along parts of the East Coast.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：猎鹰9号矗立在 Vandenberg 发射台（资料图）。照片：SpaceX，CC0，经 Wikimedia Commons。/ Photo: A Falcon 9 on the pad at Vandenberg (file photo). Photo by SpaceX, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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