A Falcon 9 rocket will make a daylight departure Friday from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

The countdown livestream once again will be available — days after federal authorities arrested an immigrant from China for allegedly flying a drone above the base.

Liftoff of the two-stage SpaceX rocket from Space Launch Complex-4 on South Base is aiming to occur at 11:28 a.m. with backup opportunities available until 3:04 p.m.

The rocket will carry 22 Starlink satellites into orbit.

Upon finishing its tasks, the first-stage booster will return to land on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship positioned in the Pacific Ocean.

A live webcast of this mission will begin about five minutes prior to liftoff, which can be watched at www.spacex.com and on X @SpaceX. 

The webcast showing the final minutes of the rocket’s countdown and first minutes of its flight is returning after inexplicably not being available for the past three launches from Vandenberg.

This week, federal authorities announced the arrest of Yinpiao Zhou for allegedly flying a drone above the base on Nov. 30.

Zhou, 39, who most recently had been living in Brentwood in Contra Costa County, has been charged with failure to register an aircraft not providing transportation, and violation of national defense airspace.

Federal documents outlining the allegations say Zhou’s drone flew over and photographed sensitive areas of the base for 59 minutes, the same day a sensitive payload traveled to space aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.

Security forces personnel contacted Zhou and another person, determining the defendant had the drone in hidden inside his jacket.

During an interview with investigators, Zhou admitted he flew the drone from Ocean Beach County Park. 

“Zhou further admitted that he had downloaded specific software onto the drone to bypass the drone’s built-in restrictions to prevent it from taking off and flying in no-fly zones,” according to documents filed in federal court. 

“Zhou further admitted that he knew taking photographs of the space contractor facility at VSFB was ‘probably not a good idea.’”

Investigators determined Zhou had searched “Vandenberg Space Force Base Drone Rules,” and messaged with another person about hacking his drone to allow the unmanned aerial system to fly higher than it could otherwise.

Zhou’s drone flew to a height approximately 4,939 feet, or approximately just shy of 1 mile, and 1.8 miles into base, beyond the required line of sight for an operator.

Federal officials say they were alerted to the illegal activity “by a drone detection system employed by VSFB Security Forces and a drone detection system employed by the FBI.” 

It’s not known if the systems detected illegal activity before Nov. 30, but that seems likely due to abrupt changes to webcast procedures for SpaceX launches from the West Coast.

The Nov. 23 launch marked the first with unexplained changes to the live webcast. The Nov. 30 and Dec. 4 missions also lacked full webcasts without explanation.

At the same time, SpaceX launches from Florida continued without changes to the live webcast practices.

Zhou was in the United States on an immigrant visa, and was arrested at San Francisco International Airport.