SpaceX · Falcon 9 · 18 Oct 2026
Monday's Falcon 9 carries two capsules built to come home, including SpaceX's second Starfall test
SpaceX has sealed 32 payloads inside a Falcon 9 fairing for Bandwagon-5, a rideshare launching from Cape Canaveral at on Monday, October 19. Most of them are satellites that will stay in orbit. Two are built to come back: Varda Space Industries' W-Series 7 capsule, carrying a cancer-drug experiment, and SpaceX's own Starfall, flying its second demo four months after the first one splashed down in the Pacific. It's also the first time Starfall has shown up on a public rideshare manifest.
SpaceX posted a photo of the encapsulated stack at : "Teams encapsulated 32 payloads ahead of Falcon 9's launch of the Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission from Florida." According to SpaceX's mission page, the one-hour window opens at from Space Launch Complex 40, with a backup the same time on Tuesday, October 20. SpaceX describes the load as "cubesats, microsats, and reentry vehicles."
Teams encapsulated 32 payloads ahead of Falcon 9's launch of the Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission from Florida
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 17, 2026
The booster is a veteran. This is its 19th flight, and its log already includes NASA's Crew-9, Firefly's Blue Ghost Mission 1 to the Moon, the Fram2 polar crew flight, Europe's MTG-S1 weather satellite and 10 Starlink missions. SpaceX plans to land it on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas about nine minutes after liftoff.
The timeline: dozens of satellites in 12 minutes, then a long wait for Starfall
SpaceX's published timeline is where this mission gets interesting. After a second burn of the upper stage at about T+53 minutes, customer payloads start leaving at T+57:18 and keep coming until T+1:09:30. That's dozens of separations in about 12 minutes. Then there's a gap of more than an hour and a half before the last line on the list: "Starfall deploys" at T+2:48:28.
If Falcon 9 lifts off at the start of the window, here's roughly when the key moments land (times shown in your time zone):
- : liftoff from SLC-40.
- About : booster landing on A Shortfall of Gravitas.
- About : first customer satellites deploy.
- About : Varda's W-Series 7 deploys.
- About : Starfall deploys.
SpaceX hasn't published Starfall's reentry plan for this flight. But the late slot lines up with how the first demo worked. On that June 23 flight, NASASpaceFlight reported that the capsule stayed attached to the upper stage for about one and a half orbits, the stage then put itself and Starfall on a path back into the atmosphere, and only then did Starfall separate for reentry. A deploy nearly three hours after launch, long after every customer is gone, fits that same playbook. That matters because Starfall, unlike Varda's capsule, has no engine of its own to leave orbit. The FAA's environmental assessment says it carries only an inert-gas attitude-control system, which can point the capsule but can't perform a deorbit burn, Spaceflight Now reported. On the first flight, the rocket did that job.
Starfall vs Varda's W-Series: two very different ways home
Both capsules exist for the same reason: bringing things made or tested in orbit back to the ground. Varda grows drug crystals in microgravity. SpaceX says Starfall is meant for in-space manufacturing and cargo delivery. But on paper, they are built very differently:
| SpaceX Starfall | Varda W-Series | |
|---|---|---|
| Size | Disk 3.1 m (about 10 ft) across, 0.75 m tall | Cone about 0.9 m (about 3 ft) across |
| Mass and cargo | About 2,100 kg, designed to carry up to 1,000 kg | Small pharmaceutical and research payloads |
| Getting out of orbit | No main engine, only gas thrusters for pointing (FAA). On the first demo, the rocket's upper stage set up reentry | Rides on its own spacecraft bus, which fires to bring it home |
| Time in orbit | Hours on the first demo | Weeks: W-5 spent about two months up, W-6 about seven weeks |
| Landing | Parachutes into the Pacific, about 1,300 km off the US West Coast on the first demo | Parachutes onto land, most recently at the Koonibba Test Range in South Australia |
| Track record | One demo flight (June 23, 2026) | Recoveries since 2024 in Utah and South Australia; W-8 and W-9 launched October 1 |
Sources for the table: NASASpaceFlight on Starfall's dimensions, cargo rating and first flight; Varda, NASA and Varda's W-6 release on W-5 and W-6; FutureSpaceFlight for the W-Series diameter; Varda's W-8/W-9 launch release; Spaceflight Now on the FAA assessment.
The size gap is the headline. Starfall is about 3.4 times wider than Varda's capsule, which gives it roughly 12 times the face area to soak up reentry heat and room inside for something closer to a pallet of cargo than a test kit. Varda's approach is the opposite: a small capsule that can sit in orbit for weeks while its experiment runs, then come down on its own schedule onto a range where it's easy to recover. Starfall, at least so far, trades that patience for scale and leans on the rocket to do the deorbit work.
What's riding in W-7
Varda says W-7 will test whether microgravity can help a promising class of cancer drugs called PROTACs. Those molecules are designed to tag disease-causing proteins for destruction, but they are large and often dissolve poorly, which makes them hard to turn into pills the body can absorb. In microgravity, Varda says, molecules can crystallize differently, which could produce crystal forms that dissolve better. Like every W-Series capsule, it uses a C-PICA heat shield, a material developed at NASA's Ames Research Center that Varda now makes at its El Segundo, California headquarters.
Why a second Starfall flight matters
When the FAA reviewed SpaceX's plans in May, the company said it wanted to "perform two Starfall reentries to demonstrate capabilities for future transport and delivery of goods through space," according to Spaceflight Now. Monday's flight would complete that pair. The same review allowed for Starfall to fly on Falcon 9 or on Starship, and NASASpaceFlight describes it as a vehicle SpaceX intends to mass-produce.
The first demo was almost entirely secret. SpaceX cut its public timeline off after the booster landed and didn't show the upper stage or the capsule on its webcast. This time, Starfall has a line on the official deployment schedule next to a manifest of paying customers. That's a small change, but it's how SpaceX tends to signal that something is moving from experiment toward product.
The rest of the manifest
The other payloads are a cross-section of the small-satellite business. Four ICEYE and two Capella radar-imaging satellites, Umbra radar satellites, a Planet Pelican imager, Tomorrow.io weather satellites and HawkEye 360 radio-mapping satellites are all on board. The one with the biggest long-term stakes may be Xona Space Systems, which is flying six satellites. TechCrunch reports that four are built on an Aerospace Labs platform, like the prototype Xona flew last year, and two were built entirely in-house at its Burlingame, California headquarters. Those two are meant to be the foundation of Pulsar, a planned 258-satellite constellation offering centimeter-level positioning, compared with meter-level GPS. Payload reports initial operations are set for early 2027.
My read
Rideshares are usually the least glamorous launches on SpaceX's calendar, and this one won't get the attention of a Starship flight. But it's a neat snapshot of where the business is going. A few years ago, getting something back from orbit meant a Dragon flight to the space station. On Monday, one Falcon 9 will carry two competing ways to do it: Varda's small, patient capsule that already has a run of recoveries behind it, and SpaceX's much larger disk that's still proving itself. If Starfall comes home cleanly again, SpaceX will have the one thing Varda doesn't, a cargo-return vehicle that rides on the world's busiest rocket and can also fly on Starship.
What to watch
- The weather and the window. The window opens at , with a backup at . SpaceX's webcast starts about 15 minutes before launch on X at @SpaceX.
- Whether SpaceX shows Starfall this time. The first demo's webcast stayed off the upper stage. Any footage of the capsule separating would be a first.
- A splashdown or recovery update. SpaceX hasn't said where this Starfall will come down. Last time, the capsule landed in the Pacific about 1,300 km off the West Coast.
- W-7's return. Varda's capsules usually spend weeks in orbit, so its landing won't come Monday.
Sources: SpaceX, Bandwagon-5 mission page (launch window, booster history and deployment timeline), checked 18 Oct 2026; @SpaceX on X (17 Oct 2026, 11:39am ET); SpaceX, Starfall Demo mission page; NASASpaceFlight (June 2026); Spaceflight Now (23 Jun 2026); Varda, W-7 mission page; Varda, W-5 mission page; Varda W-6 release (19 May 2026); NASA Flight Opportunities; FutureSpaceFlight; TechCrunch (9 Oct 2026); Payload (7 Oct 2026); Varda W-8/W-9 release (1 Oct 2026); lead photo, Wikimedia Commons. Clock times assume liftoff at the start of the window; size ratios are my own arithmetic from the published figures.
— @AlJR86
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