SpaceX’s next rideshare mission is about more than just dropping off satellites. Bandwagon-5, which was scrubbed Monday morning because of weather, is carrying 32 payloads, including two capsules designed to come back to Earth. One is SpaceX’s own mysterious Starfall vehicle, flying for just the second time. The other is a small reentry craft built to test whether making medicine in microgravity can improve it.

Here’s what’s on board and what to watch for.

Scrubbed Monday, trying again Tuesday

According to Spaceflight Now, SpaceX called off the Monday, October 19 attempt because of poor weather in the booster recovery zone. The company is now targeting Tuesday, October 20, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, during an hour-long window that opens at 6:30 a.m. EDT.

The outlook is better for Tuesday. The 45th Weather Squadron forecast a 90 percent chance of acceptable conditions at launch, with only a moderate risk that weather at the booster’s landing zone won’t cooperate.

A well-traveled booster

The Falcon 9 first stage, tail number B1085, will be making its 19th flight. Its earlier missions include NASA’s Crew-9 and Fram2 crewed flights, Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 to the Moon and ten batches of Starlink satellites. About nine minutes after liftoff it will try to land on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas. Spaceflight Now notes a successful landing would be the 672nd Falcon booster landing to date.

Starfall returns

The headline payload is Starfall, a reentry capsule SpaceX first flew in June with little fanfare. During that broadcast, a SpaceX commentator described it as “a microgravity lab researchers and entrepreneurs can leverage to develop their products and innovations.”

Details remain scarce, but a Federal Aviation Administration environmental assessment gives a sense of its size:

  • About 0.75 meters (2.5 feet) tall and 3.1 meters (10.2 feet) wide
  • A mass of roughly 2,100 kilograms (4,600 pounds)
  • Room for up to 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) of payload

SpaceX hasn’t said what, if anything, Starfall is carrying this time.

Testing a cancer drug in orbit

Starfall isn’t the only capsule planning to come home. Varda Space Industries is flying its W-7 spacecraft, roughly three times smaller than Starfall. Despite its name, it will be Varda’s ninth reentry capsule; W-8 and W-9 launched earlier this month.

W-7 carries an experiment on a class of cancer-fighting molecules known as PROTACs. Varda says that in microgravity, molecules can crystallize differently than on Earth, potentially producing crystal forms with better properties such as improved solubility. The company says that if the experiment works, it could help make these powerful protein-degrading molecules more practical as treatments. As with any early research, it’s a test, not a promise.

The rest of the manifest

Twenty of the other 31 payloads were arranged by mission management company Exolaunch. They include:

  • Four radio-frequency monitoring satellites from HawkEye 360
  • Four satellites for Finnish company Iceye
  • Six navigation satellites from Xona Space Systems

Also aboard is Starburst-1, a demonstration mission from Portal Space Systems. The 260-kilogram spacecraft is designed to perform orbital maneuvers and carry customer payloads of up to 50 kilograms, with customer flights advertised to begin in 2027.

Why reentry capsules matter

For decades, getting experiments back from space meant waiting for a ride on a crewed spacecraft or the space station’s cargo flights. Small, dedicated reentry capsules could make it cheaper and faster to run experiments in microgravity and bring the results home for study. Two of them on a single rideshare is a sign of how quickly that market is developing.

How to watch

Spaceflight Now plans live coverage starting about an hour before liftoff. If you’re on Florida’s Space Coast, a predawn Falcon 9 launch is one of the best free shows around. Just remember that launch times can slip, so check for updates before you head out.

Image: Falcon 9 launches THAICOM 8 by Ben_Cooper via Flickr, Public Domain Mark 1.0