A return flight is targeted this morning
The race above launch this week is whether another commercial reentry vehicle gets off the pad. Spaceflight Now updated its Bandwagon-5 story on Oct. 19 at 4:07 a.m. EDT: SpaceX scrubbed the Monday attempt because of weather in the booster recovery zone and retargeted Tuesday, Oct. 20. The window opens at 6:30 a.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 40, with 32 payloads. This pass closed before 10:30 UTC, so it stops short of a liftoff report.
Spaceflight Now says the rocket carries SpaceX's second uncrewed Starfall capsule. It attributes to an FAA environmental assessment a vehicle about 0.75 meters tall and 3.1 meters across, about 2,100 kilograms, able to support up to 1,000 kilograms of payload. The same account puts Varda W-7 on the flight, calls it Varda's ninth reentry capsule launched, and says it is about three times smaller than Starfall, after W-8 and W-9 flew on Oct. 1. It also lists Portal Space Systems Starburst-1, a 260 kilogram company-funded maneuvering demo, with customer flights advertised for 2027. NASASpaceFlight on Oct. 18 agrees on the Tuesday window, the second Starfall, and W-7. It schedules Starfall deployment for 2 hours 48 minutes after liftoff and says Exolaunch is manifesting Impulse Space LEO Express 4 on the same stack.
Varda's own W-7 page, read this pass, still says only scheduled and Oct 2026. It describes a PROTAC cancer-medicine experiment aimed at solubility. It leaves out the rocket, the clock time, and any recovery date.
What Varda told a reporter
Space.com published on Oct. 13 an interview with chief executive Will Bruey from Oct. 7. He said another vehicle was scheduled later in October. The article says that if that third spacecraft launches nominally, all three will come down before Christmas at the Koonibba Test Range in South Australia through Southern Launch. It says Varda aims to fly seven more missions in 2027: two in the first quarter, two in the second, and three in the third on one rocket. Those are statements to a reporter, not a posted reentry notice, and the W-7 page still has no calendar day.
The same article says the September round was $251 million, that the company had 286 employees, and that it planned to hire 100 more by the end of 2027. Bruey said the company was stacked with launches through 2029. That booking claim is his comment, not a published manifest.
Station paperwork, not a capsule award
NASA's Johnson procurement page for the Commercial LEO Destination Contract lists pre-proposal conference charts dated Oct. 15, 2026, and a news line that those charts were posted that day. The milestone table shows the final request released on Oct. 9, proposals due on a planned date of Dec. 8 with the actual date blank, and contract award planned for spring 2027 with the actual date blank. The prior overview's $100 million winner guarantee, April decision, and $325 million and $300 million 2030 prices came from Ars Technica and are absent from this table. Posting charts is not a tug flight or a capsule recovery. Vast, Axiom, and Voyager already carry the Dec. 8 proposal date on their records.
What to watch through spring 2027
Watch whether Bandwagon-5 leaves the pad in the Oct. 20 window and whether Starfall, W-7, and LEO Express 4 are actually deployed. Watch whether Varda posts a Koonibba date for W-7, W-8, and W-9, or leaves the before-Christmas plan as an interview line. The Bandwagon-5 articles opened here include no measured watt from the Oct. 1 power-beaming payloads. Watch the Dec. 8 station proposals and whether the Johnson table still says spring 2027 after that date.
