While emergency declarations, cancellations and postponements are cascading around the world in response to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, satellites in the growing SpaceX Starlink constellation are continuing to fly. 

Elon Musk’s rocket and soon-to-be broadband company has a Falcon 9 rocket scheduled to launch from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center Sunday morning, carrying another batch of 60 Starlink satellites. The launch was set for Saturday but pushed back a day to complete required testing. 

Sunday’s launch is scheduled for 6:22 a.m PT using a Falcon 9 rocket that’s made four previous flights, including a prior Starlink mission. This will be the first time one of the company’s rockets attempts its fifth launch. 

SpaceX will attempt to recover the rocket’s first stage and both halves of its nose cone using three different ships staged in the Atlantic Ocean. 

The company has so far launched over 300 of the nascent nodes to low-Earth orbit, with plans to have over 1,500 in space by the end of the year. The long-term plan for the mega-constellation could see an astounding 42,000 satellites circling the planet, beaming high-speed internet to just about anywhere. 

Almost from the moment the first satellites deployed in May of 2019, astronomers began sounding the alarm about the surprising brightness of the robotic routers, which can interfere with scientific observations of space. A study released last week from the European Southern Observatory declared that the National Science Foundation’s upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory (now under construction in Chile) would be “severely affected” by mega-constellations including Starlink and others planned by OneWeb, Amazon and more. 


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But SpaceX and Elon Musk have been steadfast in their assurances that the brightness problem will be addressed and there will be “zero” impacts to scientific discoveries, as Musk said during his Satellite 2020 keynote interview Monday. 

Regardless, for now, SpaceX is continuing to ramp up Starlink launches to stay ahead of the competition and meet an FCC milestone requirement that at least 2,212 of the satellites be up and running by 2024. 

You can watch Sunday’s entire mission via the SpaceX feed above, which should go live about 15 minutes before launch.

Originally published March 12.
Update March 14, 12:57 p.m. PT: Adds new launch date and time.