Florida's Space Coast is still humming in 2026, even if the pace hasn't quite matched last year's record-shattering 109 orbital launches. Through the end of July, 49 rockets had already lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center — a number that, for context, would have tied the state's all-time annual record as recently as 2021.
August kicks off early with a SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird 11, 12 and 13 cellular broadband satellites into low-Earth orbit from Launch Complex 40 on Wednesday, Aug. 5, at 3:42 a.m. A second Falcon 9 follows on Monday, Aug. 10, lofting 29 Starlink satellites on a northeast trajectory with a launch window from 10:49 a.m. to 2:49 p.m.
The month's marquee event comes on Sunday, Aug. 30, when a SpaceX Falcon Heavy is scheduled to launch NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center at 7:26 a.m. The Roman telescope boasts a field of view at least 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope — and this one will produce sonic booms audible along the Space Coast.
Looking further out, a four-person crew including NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov is set to head to the International Space Station on the SpaceX Crew-13 mission in mid-September. Later in the year, Sierra Space's uncrewed Dream Chaser space plane is targeting a fourth-quarter launch atop a ULA Vulcan rocket from Launch Complex 41. Dates and times for all missions are subject to change.
Florida Today's Space Team provides live coverage starting at least 90 minutes before each liftoff at floridatoday.com/space; this schedule was reported by Florida Today.
