SpaceX has rescheduled the launch of its Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission for Tuesday morning after poor weather conditions in the booster recovery zone forced controllers to scrub Monday’s initial attempt.
The uncrewed mission is now slated to lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station during an hour-long window opening at 6:30 a.m. EDT (1030 UTC). The Falcon 9 rocket will carry 32 payloads on a southeasterly trajectory upon leaving the pad.
Meteorologists with the 45th Weather Squadron have issued a prelaunch forecast calling for a 90 percent chance of acceptable weather during the Tuesday window. The improved outlook is driven by a cold front along southern Florida that is drifting further south, which is expected to decrease high winds at liftoff compared to conditions on Monday. Launch weather officers also noted that the Cumulus Cloud Rule presents a reduced concern as a high-pressure system shifts south, bringing increased subsidence and lowering the probability of shower and cloud development. Recovery area weather risks have also moderated.
SpaceX is utilizing the Falcon 9 first-stage booster bearing tail number B1085 for the flight. This mission marks the booster’s 19th flight following previous launches for NASA’s Crew-9, Fram2, Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1, RRT-1, SXM-10, SXM-11, MTG-S1, EchoStar25, and 10 batches of Starlink satellites. Approximately nine minutes after liftoff, B1085 is scheduled to target a landing on the autonomous droneship A Shortall of Gravitas. If successful, it will mark the 167th landing on that specific vessel and the 672nd Falcon booster landing overall.
Among the 32 payloads packed inside the Falcon 9 payload fairing is SpaceX’s uncrewed reentry capsule, Starfall. SpaceX first debuted the spacecraft in June, maintaining a closely guarded approach prior to that flight. Company officials have described Starfall as a microgravity laboratory intended for researchers and entrepreneurs developing products and innovations in space. According to an environmental assessment by the Federal Aviation Administration, the vehicle measures about 0.75 meters, or 2.5 feet, in height, spans 3.1 meters, or 10.2 feet, in diameter, and possesses a mass of approximately 2,100 kilograms, or 4,600 pounds. The FAA noted that a single Starfall capsule can support up to 1,000 kilograms, or 2,200 pounds, of payload mass, though SpaceX did not disclose specifics regarding payloads onboard for this particular flight.
Starfall is not the only reentry vehicle flying on the Bandwagon-5 mission. Varda Space Industries, a firm specializing in pharmaceutical research, is launching its W-Series 7 spacecraft. Although designated W-7, the capsule represents Varda’s ninth reentry vehicle launched to date, following the launch of W-8 and W-9 earlier in the month on the Transporter-18 mission. The W-7 capsule carries the cancer drug Protac to study whether microgravity conditions can alter molecular crystallization, potentially improving the drug’s solubility and creating more practical and effective cancer treatments.
In addition to the reentry capsules, multinational mission management company Exolaunch manifested 20 of the remaining payloads on the flight. These include four radio-frequency monitoring satellites for Virginia-based HawkEye 360, four communications satellites for Finnish microsatellite company Iceye, and six navigation satellites for California-based Xona Space Systems.
The manifest also features the Starburst-1 demonstration mission developed by Portal Space Systems Inc. The 260-kilogram spacecraft is engineered to perform orbital maneuvers and support customer payloads of up to 50 kilograms. Portal Space Systems stated that the demonstration flight is fully funded internally to prove operational capabilities ahead of commercial customer missions slated to begin in 2027.
