SpaceX is set to launch 21 Starlink satellites and two Starshield satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Saturday night, June 6, in a mission slated to lift off just after 9:24 p.m. PDT. The Falcon 9 for the Starlink 17-43 mission is scheduled to rise from Space Launch Complex 4 East, with live coverage beginning about 30 minutes before liftoff.
The launch window opens at 7 p.m., according to local coverage, and the time converts to 12:24:30 a.m. EDT and 0424:30 UTC on Sunday, June 7. SpaceX plans to use first stage booster B1097, which is flying for the tenth time after previous missions including NROL-172, the Twilight rideshare and seven Starlink batches.
A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1097 will target a landing on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You. If the recovery works, it would be the 201st landing on that vessel and the 620th booster landing overall, a pace that shows how routine reuse has become for the company even as it keeps pushing a high launch rate.
The Starshield satellites add the part of the mission SpaceX has not explained. Starshield is the government version of the Starlink architecture, but SpaceX has not said which U.S. government agency ordered the pair or whether they are for a foreign government. reported in April 2024 that Northrop Grumman is providing sensors for some of the satellites, and the company has already flown two 2025 missions, Starlink 13-1 and Starlink 13-4, that reportedly carried two Starshield satellites each.
Those earlier spacecraft were logged by the U.S. Space Force as USA 485, 486, 549 and 550, but the service has not publicly tied them to any specific part of the U.S. government. That leaves Saturday’s mixed payload with a familiar launch profile and an unresolved customer question, one that will remain open unless SpaceX or a government agency identifies the cargo after liftoff.
