Delegates from the Bahamas visit SpaceX launch facilities in Florida in February 2025. (SpaceX/TNS) ORLANDO, Fla. (Tribune News Service) — SpaceX has found a new parking spot off of the Bahamas for its drone ships that catch boosters from launches from the Space Coast. A Falcon 9 rocket on the Starlink 10-12 mission carrying 23 of the company’s internet satellites is targeting a 6:15 p.m. Tuesday liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 during a 6-10 p.m. window. A backup launch window is available during the same four-hour run on Wednesday. Space Launch Delta 45’s weather squadron forecasts a 95% chance for good conditions from the launch site, which drops to 50% if delayed 24 hours. The first-stage booster for the mission is making its 16th launch. Instead of landing away from land like it normally does when it deploys its droneships into the Atlantic, for this launch, the ship Just Read the Instructions will be stationed off the coast of the Bahamas. “Our new landing collaboration with the Bahamas will enable Falcon 9 to launch to new orbital trajectories,” the company posted on X earlier this month while showing images of that country’s delegates visiting SpaceX facilities on the Space Coast. SpaceX has warned that residents in the Bahamas may hear one or more sonic booms during the first-stage landing, similar to how Central Florida counties are subjected to the rattling sound when SpaceX opts to land its boosters back at Canaveral’s Landing Zone 1. This marks the 16th launch from the Space Coast so far in 2025, with SpaceX responsible for all but one of them. Blue Origin’s New Glenn flew the other with that heavy-lift rocket’s debut launch in January. Its next flight could be for NASA this spring. NASA just gave New Glenn a Category 1 certification, meaning it could be lined up to carry what was supposed to be its debut payload last fall, a pair of Mars-bound satellites for a mission called ESCAPADE. Meanwhile, United Launch Alliance has shifted gears while it waits for certification from the Space Force for its Vulcan Centaur rocket awaiting the OK to begin flying a backlog of national security missions. Instead, ULA’s next flight could be an Atlas V rocket on the first operational mission for Amazon’s Project Kuiper constellation of internet satellites designed to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink. Amazon has already shipped out the first batch for what is aiming to eventually grow to 3,236 broadband satellites, half of which need to be launched by mid-2026 in order to maintain a Federal Communications Commission license. ULA has contracts to send up eight of its Atlas V rockets, most of which could launch this year, carrying the first satellites for Project Kuiper. ULA also has lined up an addition 38 missions to be flown on its Vulcan rockets, but only after it starts knocking off more than 20 missions for the Department of Defense. Blue Origin also has Amazon lined up as a customer with 12 mission under contract, and potentially 15 more. Those orders along with SpaceX’s normal cadence of launches could mean the Space Coast could see as many as 156 launches in 2025, an average of 13 per month. January, though, only saw 10 missions while February may not reach that mark, depending on how many more SpaceX missions get flown in the next 10 days. SpaceX has another Starlink launch from Cape Canaveral slated for Friday morning, according to the FAA, while the next SpaceX flight from neighboring Kennedy Space Center may not be until Feb. 26. That mission will see a Falcon 9 carrying up the lunar lander Athena for commercial company Intuitive Machines, which is trying to improve on the historic landing in 2024 of its Odysseus lander that touched down, but tipped on its side. ©2025 Orlando Sentinel.