SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites into polar orbit – Spaceflight Now

Update Aug. 30, 1:15 a.m. EDT: SpaceX landed the booster on the drone ship.

SpaceX launched 24 Starlink broadband satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base Friday night on a Falcon 9 rocket launch.

The mission dubbed Starlink 17-7 was the fourth and remaining Starlink mission to launch from California in August. SpaceX liftoff of its Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East occurred at 9:59 p.m. PDT (12:59 a.m. EDT / 0459 UTC).



SpaceX launched its Starlink satellites utilizing the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail quantity B1082, which flew for a fifteenth time. It beforehand launched two nationwide safety payloads, a batch of OneWeb broadband Internet satellites and 15 earlier batches of Starlink satellites.

Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1082 landed on the drone ship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You.’ This was the 147th touchdown on this vessel and the 496th booster touchdown so far.

Prior to Friday’s launch, SpaceX launched 27 Starlink missions from Vandenberg in 2025 out of a complete of 39 Falcon 9 launches. All informed, the corporate launched 106 orbital missions this 12 months because it goals for 170 such launches by 12 months’s finish.

SpaceX continues to bolster its low Earth orbit Starlink constellation because it rolls out the service to extra nations and territories around the globe. According to numbers tracked by astronomer and skilled orbital tracker, Jonathan McDowell, there are greater than 8,200 Starlink satellites on orbit.