Watch SpaceX launch its 100th mission of the year tonight

SpaceX is about to hit the century mark for the third year in a row.

A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base tonight (Aug.

18), during a four-hour window that opens at 10 p.m.

EDT (7 p.m. local time; 0200 GMT on Aug.

19).

It will be the 97th Falcon 9 launch of the year and the 100th mission of 2026 overall for SpaceX .

You can watch live via the company's website , beginning about 10 minutes before liftoff.

Tonight's mission will carry 24 of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites to low Earth orbit .

If all goes according to plan, the Falcon 9's upper stage will deploy them there 61.5 minutes after liftoff.

The rocket's first stage, meanwhile, will come back to Earth about 8.5 minutes into flight, landing in the Pacific Ocean on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You." It will be the 12th mission for this particular booster, which is designated B1097.

B1097 is no stranger to milestone flights.

During a Starlink launch this past April, for example, the booster performed the 600th landing of an orbital rocket in SpaceX's illustrious history.

Previous Booster B1097 launches Sentinel-6B | Twilight | NROL-172 | Transporter-17 | 7 Starlink missions The vast majority of SpaceX's launches this year — at the moment, 73 of them — have been devoted to building out the Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of nearly 11,000 operational satellites .

One of SpaceX's three non-Falcon 9 launches of 2026 was performed by its Falcon Heavy rocket.