It’s been a hot minute since the last Falcon 9 launch here on the Eastern Range, or at least it feels that way. Last year saw a Falcon 9 launch from Florida roughly every 3.4 days, and tonight marks the 9th day since the last SpaceX rocket roared off of SLC-40.

That dry spell should end tonight with the launch of the GPS III SV09 mission from Cape Canaveral. The launch window opens at 11:38PM ET and lasts for fifteen minutes.

Falcon 9 booster B1096 will power the mission off of the launch pad, and it is planned to complete its fifth mission when it touches down off the coast of the Carolinas aboard ‘A Shortfall Of Gravitas.’ B1096 previously launched KF-01, IMAP, NROL-77, and one Starlink mission.

At A Glance

Trajectory

Northeast.

Weather

The 45th Weather Squadron of the US Space Force’s Launch Delta 45 issued their L-1 Launch Mission Execution Forecast yesterday, and it could not be much better, cool temperatures notwithstanding: 95+% Go throughout the launch window:

Payload

GPS III Space Vehicle 09 is the ninth of ten upgraded navigation satellites built by Lockheed Martin for the U.S. Space Force. It offers three times better accuracy and eight times stronger anti-jamming capability compared to older GPS satellites. Military users get the encrypted M-code signal for secure operations, while civilians benefit from the L1C signal that works alongside Europe’s Galileo system.

The satellite is named “Ellison Onizuka” after the Air Force colonel and NASA astronaut lost in the Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986—almost exactly 40 years ago. After reaching medium Earth orbit about 90 minutes after liftoff, SV09 will undergo testing before joining the operational GPS constellation.