Bandwagon-5 slips to Tuesday with SpaceX's Starfall capsule on board

SpaceX's next rideshare flight will have to wait a day. The company scrubbed Monday's Bandwagon-5 launch because of poor weather in the area where the Falcon 9 booster was meant to land, Spaceflight Now reports. SpaceX now targets Tuesday, October 20, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral.

New launch time

The one-hour window opens at 6:30 a.m. EDT (10:30 UTC, 13:30 Kyiv time), with a backup opportunity on Wednesday, October 21. The 45th Weather Squadron gives Tuesday a 90% chance of acceptable weather at liftoff, much better than Monday, though there is still a moderate risk of bad conditions at the landing site.

Starfall flies again

The most curious payload belongs to SpaceX itself. Starfall is the company's uncrewed reentry capsule, which debuted on a mission in June. SpaceX described it then as a microgravity lab for researchers and companies developing products in space. According to an FAA environmental assessment quoted by Spaceflight Now, the capsule weighs about 2,100 kg and can carry up to 1,000 kg of payload. SpaceX hasn't said what, if anything, is inside this one.

Varda's ninth capsule

Starfall isn't the only spacecraft coming home. Varda Space Industries is flying its W-7 capsule, about three times smaller. Despite the name, it is Varda's ninth reentry vehicle: W-8 and W-9 launched earlier this month on Transporter-18. W-7 carries a cancer-drug compound to test whether crystals grown in microgravity dissolve better, an idea Varda hopes could lead to improved medicines. (Not every space-biology question gets a dramatic answer: a recent study found that weightlessness doesn't seem to change our DNA.)

Who else is on board

Of the other 31 payloads, 20 were arranged by Exolaunch. They include:

• four radio-frequency monitoring satellites from HawkEye 360;
• four satellites from Finland's ICEYE, the radar-imaging company whose satellite was recently shadowed by a Russian spacecraft;
• six navigation satellites from Xona Space Systems.