The countdown has begun as SpaceX is launching 45 satellites to low Earth orbit from California in the early hours of Sunday, May 3, and the mission carries more than the usual rideshare cargo. The Falcon 9 booster making this flight is one landing away from tying the company’s own reuse record.
How to watch the SpaceX CAS500-2 launch live
A live webcast of this mission will begin about 15 minutes prior to liftoff, which you can watch on SpaceX’s official page and on its social media handles.
What is SpaceX CAS500-2?
CAS500-2 serves as the main payload which represents a small Earth-observation satellite created by the Korean Aerospace Research Institute. The satellite had its first launch contract established with a Russian Soyuz rocket in 2022, but the international partnership for the contract broke apart after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. The satellite remained in storage as South Korea searched for an alternative launch vehicle.
The CAS500-2 satellite is one of the five satellites from South Korea’s “Compact Advanced Satellite 500” programme that collects data for disaster monitoring and agricultural observations.
Two other satellites have been successfully put into orbit; CAS500-1 was launched on a Soyuz rocket in March 2021, while CAS500-3 was launched on a Korean Nuri rocket in November 2025.
There are 44 rideshare satellites being launched along with CAS500-2, which include the companies Planet Labs, Lynk Global, True Anomaly, Argotec, Exolaunch, and Loft-EarthDaily. The deployment is expected to take place an hour after the rocket launch and continue for 90 minutes as the payload is deployed from the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket.
B1071 is the booster being used in this mission, which will make its 33rd launch and landing only a launch away from the Falcon 9 reusability record by a different booster in March 2026.
