SpaceX Launches Bandwagon-5 After a One-Day Delay, With a Starfall Capsule Aboard

Image: SpaceX

Update, October 20, 2026: SpaceX launched Bandwagon-5 from Florida on Tuesday morning, one day after the recovery-weather delay below. The company posted “Liftoff!” at 4:04 AM PT, and about nine minutes later it confirmed that Falcon 9’s first stage had landed on the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship.

One of the payloads on board was a SpaceX Starfall capsule, which the company says in its Starfall post “enables affordable, routine access to a microgravity environment, providing unique opportunities for on-orbit manufacturing, scientific research, and testing.” We covered Starfall in September when SpaceX signed its first known customer for the capsule. SpaceX said rideshare deployment began at about 5:01 AM PT and posted at 6:56 AM PT that the payload deployment sequence was complete. It hasn’t said how many payloads flew on Bandwagon-5 or when the Starfall capsule is expected to come back down.

SpaceX has pushed its Bandwagon-5 Falcon 9 rideshare launch from Florida to no earlier than Tuesday, October 20, citing recovery weather.

That’s according to a SpaceX post early Monday. The company said unfavorable recovery weather conditions forced the slip and pointed readers to the mission page for updates. Bandwagon-5 is a Falcon 9 rideshare flight, the kind of shared launch SpaceX uses to loft several smaller payloads on one rocket.

Weather holds on booster recovery are a familiar SpaceX speed bump. The company flies Falcon 9s at a high cadence from Florida and California, and it will scrub or delay when seas or winds make catching or recovering the first stage too risky, even if the pad side looks fine. Bandwagon missions sit in that same ops mix as Starlink and other rideshares, so a one-day slip is routine more often than it is dramatic.

Tuesday is also a busy SpaceX calendar day for a different reason. The company is set to host its third-quarter earnings webcast after the close on October 20, its first report tied to that session since the June IPO. A morning or afternoon Bandwagon attempt would not change the earnings call, but it does stack two public SpaceX moments on the same date if the weather clears.

SpaceX has not posted a new T-0 countdown, a new primary window or a backup day beyond “no earlier than” October 20. It also has not listed every payload on Bandwagon-5 in the delay note. Keep an eye on the mission page and the SpaceX account for the next NET.

If the seas cooperate, will Bandwagon-5 clear the pad before the earnings webcast starts?