Florida’s Space Coast is the home of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, where a record-breaking 72 orbital launches took flight last year.
After seven rockets lifted off in January, officials now expect the 2024 total to reach an unprecedented 111 launches, led by SpaceX. The company’s Starlink internet-satellite constellation missions will comprise the bulk of that total.
Following are the latest missions coming up from the Cape. All launches are listed in Eastern Standard Time. Be aware: Dates and times are routinely subject to change for a variety of reasons.
- Mission: NASA’s PACE observatory — an acronym for Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem — will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and gather “immense quantities of data” on the chemical composition, movement and interaction of airborne particles and clouds by scanning Earth with polarimeters every two days.
- Launch: 1:33 a.m.
- Location: Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
- Live coverage: Starts 90 minutes before liftoff at floridatoday.com/space