Category: Launches & Spacecraft

The hours are counting down to the launch of NASA's newest flagship orbital observatory. The spacecraft recently got its last glimpse of terrestrial light before being encapsulated in its rocket's protective payload fairing last week and is imminently bound for liftoff.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is NASA's next-generation research satellite, and it's currently slated to launch on Sunday (Aug. 30). Roman will lift off atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket at 7:27 a.m. EDT (1127 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The scope will then head to sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2 (L2), an orbital sweet spot about 930,000 miles (1.5 million km) away that will park the spacecraft on the side of Earth opposite the sun.

Roman's upcoming launch will cap nearly two decades and $4 billion of development and usher in a new wave of astronomical research into dark matter and dark energy, exoplanet discoveries and the ability to capture visible-to-near-infrared images of the universe that are 50 times wider than the field of view on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). But last year, as Roman's assembly and testing neared completion, President Trump's leaked budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 (FY26) stoked fears that the entire mission could be canceled.

In April 2025, reporting about initial "passback" budget documents outlined a proposal for the largest cut in NASA's history — a 24% overall reduction in funding, with a 50% loss to science programs. The document detailed continued support for missions like Hubble and JWST but allocated "no funding … for other telescopes." The news shocked scientists and engineers across NASA missions, who were suddenly dealt a dose of uncertainty as their job security teetered in political limbo.

For Roman's team, the prospect of abandoning the telescope just before the finish line hit hard. Lisa, an engineer who worked on Roman's team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and wished to be identified by an alias, was left confounded at the time. "We're 95% there. If it gets canceled, it would be really ridiculous, and I don't know how I would handle it," she told Space.com in an interview. "This is basically my life's work."

Others working on Roman took the news in stride. Jamie Dunn has worked at Goddard since 1991. He served as Roman's project manager from 2018 until he was appointed director of the center this past June. During a question-and-answer session with a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on Aug. 10 — part of a congressionally mandated assessment prompted in part by reporting from Space.com about accelerated facility closures and consolidations at Goddard last year — Dunn described a calmer reaction to Roman's potential cancellation.

"Out of the eight years I [worked on Roman]," he told the committee, "we were zeroed out in the president's budget … in at least half of them. Not to be casual about it, but that happens."

When the president's official "skinny budget" proposal was published a few weeks after the April leak last year, Roman's prospects shifted from dire to just worrisome. Instead of cancelling the mission outright, the administration's budget request allocated just $156.6 million to Roman's continued development in FY26 — less than half of what the project received in FY25.

Goddard personnel began working around the clock at a time when government agencies, including NASA, were initiating reductions in force and encouraging civil servants to accept a "deferred resignation" option. Of three skilled technicians working in one department of Roman's team, two left, according to Lisa, which put further strain on the telescope's ongoing qualification testing at the time.

"We're pushing forward to get as far as we can while we have our current funding, and we'll see what happens," Lisa told Space.com last summer. "That amount of funding obviously will make it impossible, in my opinion, to keep schedule, because we can't keep running two shifts with half the people."

On the management side, Dunn tried to keep his team from getting distracted by politics. "Sometimes you've just got to keep coloring," he told the National Academies committee. "We kept working, and I [told the Roman team that] the best thing we can do is deliver on our commitments. And if delivering on our commitments isn't good enough, then what else can we do?"

Lisa said that Roman's mission leadership mitigated the team's panic. "[They] actually did a really good job of telling us, 'We're just going to proceed as we were before … Just focus on the work,' and, 'The best way to make sure we don't get cut is to continue delivering and continue to stay on schedule,'" she said.

Many of the engineers and technicians working on Roman "just put on blinders, put our heads down and kept working," Lisa said. "People were giving up their weekends, and at the same time, there was this compartmentalized knowledge that it could all get cut."

Rather than merely stay on schedule, though, the Roman mission team was pushed to accelerate it. Congress ultimately rejected the steep cuts to NASA in the president's budget request and restored the agency's funding to the previous year's levels. Not wanting to go through a repeat of uncertainty for FY27, Roman mission management began eyeing faster routes to the launch pad.

"They just kept pulling it earlier and earlier, because I think they were pushing to get it off the ground and in space before it could get cut," Lisa said. Eventually, Roman's target launch date moved up to September, and then to the end of August "so that it could happen within this fiscal year."

"In order to stay on schedule at the time, the Roman teams were running two shifts every day and working every Saturday, sometimes on Sundays," Lisa said. The strain took a toll on morale, but their hard work paid off. NASA announced the Roman Space Telescope's completion in April, eight months ahead of schedule, and under budget.

"Lo and behold, it turns out delivering on your commitments means something," Dunn said.

Now, all eyes are turning to watch Roman leave Earth. Having passed all its political hurdles leading up to launch day, Roman has one more major milestone: Launching to space to begin its mission.

Rocket rides to orbit aren't known for being particularly smooth, and after so much time spent worrying about budgets and schedules, Lisa said the part that makes her and her colleagues most nervous now is that it's out of their hands. "The launch vehicle … that's what we kind of don't have control over," Lisa said. "I'm really nervous, because it's just so many people's effort and years of work and sacrifice."

It'll take the telescope 30 days to reach its L2 destination, and there are a few benchmarks it has to meet along the way. Roman will have to perform a few trajectory adjustments, including the mid-course "correction 1" maneuver about 24 hours after launch, which Lisa described as one of Roman's most consequential in reaching its designated orbit.

After nearly two decades of development — and a final year spent wondering whether the telescope would make it to the launch pad at all — the team's focus has finally shifted to Roman's actual in-space operation as it awaits delivery to its new home in the final frontier.

Europe's most powerful rocket flew again today (Aug. 27).

An Ariane 6 launched the MTG-I2 weather satellite from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana today (Aug. 27) at 4:10 p.m. EDT (2010 GMT; 5:10 p.m. local time in Kourou), right at the beginning of a 2.5-hour window.

Everything went according to plan today: The Ariane 6 released MTG-I2 into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) 36 minutes after liftoff.

The 8,400-pound (3,800 kilograms) MTG-I2 is the second imaging satellite in the Meteosat Third Generation network (hence the name). It will complete the three-spacecraft constellation in geostationary orbit, which lies 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth.

Its companions, MTG-I1 and MTS-S1, launched in December 2022 and July 2025, respectively. MTG-I1 is an imaging craft and MTS-S1 is a "sounder," using an infrared instrument to probe different layers of Earth's atmosphere.

The MTG satellites are operated by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), an international group based in Germany. And they're very capable, according to Arianespace.

"The MTG system is part of a new generation of geostationary satellites providing imagery for the early detection of fast-developing severe storms, weather forecasting and climate monitoring," the company wrote in the MTG-I2 press kit, which you can find here.

Arianespace went on to describe MTG as "the most complex and innovative meteorological geostationary system ever built," citing its potential to improve the prediction and early detection of severe weather events.

"The data gathered will have a wide range of uses, from enabling aircraft to avoid storms and for earlier alerts of flooding, through to more precise monitoring of fires and fog," the company wrote.

Today's launch was the ninth to date for the Ariane 6, which can deliver up to 12.7 tons (11.5 metric tons) to GTO in its burliest configuration. For comparison, SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket has a GTO payload capacity of 9.15 tons (8.3 metric tons).

The Ariane 6 debuted in July 2024. Before today, the rocket last flew this past June, when it successfully sent 36 of Amazon's broadband satellites to low Earth orbit.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 4:20 p.m. ET on Aug. 27 with news of successful liftoff, then again at 4:50 p.m. ET with news of satellite deployment.

SpaceX's launch from Florida early this morning (Aug. 25) was memorable in more ways than one.

The mission, which sent 29 Starlink internet satellites skyward from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 5:33 a.m. EDT (0933 GMT), was the 100th flight of 2026 for SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. It was also the 37th flight for this particular vehicle's first stage, setting a new reuse record for the company.

And we learned a few hours after liftoff that it was also the last-ever Falcon 9 Starlink mission to fly from the Sunshine State.

"From here on, Starlink missions out of Florida will fly on Starship. The West Coast team will continue regularly launching Starlink from Vandenberg [Space Force Base in California]," Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX vice president of launch, said via X this morning.

"In the last seven years, Falcon has flown ~260 Starlink missions from the Cape … can't wait until we launch that and many more with Starship!" he added.

Starship, which stands more than 400 feet (122 meters) tall, is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, and it's designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. Starship remains in the testing phase; SpaceX has conducted 13 test flights with the vehicle to date, all of them suborbital.

Starship currently launches only from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas. But the company is already building pads for the giant rocket in Florida, and it announced today that it plans to break ground next year on Starbase Louisiana, which it says will be able to support thousands of Starship liftoffs per year.

SpaceX thinks Starship will revolutionize spaceflight when it comes online. The company plans to phase out the Falcon 9 and its heavy-lift cousin, the Falcon Heavy, after that happens, so the final Falcon 9 Starlink launch from the West Coast may be coming relatively soon as well.

The Falcon 9 made quite an impression on skywatchers during this morning's Starlink swan song from the Space Coast, creating a "jellyfish" in the sky visible to folks as far away as New York City. Indeed, some people in the Big Apple posted video of the Falcon 9 cruising over the city's famous skyline.

The jellyfish effect is a regular feature of Falcon 9 missions that launch shortly before dawn or not long after dusk. During these windows, sunlight illuminates the rocket's expanding exhaust plume while the sky itself remains mostly dark.

The buildout of the Starlink megaconstellation has driven Falcon 9's launch cadence to record highs over the past few years. In 2024 and 2025, for example, the rocket lifted off a total of 297 times, and 211 of those were Starlink flights. Seventy-seven of the 100 Falcon 9 launches this year have been Starlink missions.

SpaceX launched 27 more of its Starlink broadband satellites to orbit today (Aug. 26), in a predawn liftoff from California's central coast.

The spacecraft rode atop a Falcon 9 rocket, which lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 5:35 a.m. EDT (0935 GMT; 2:35 a.m. local California time).

The rocket's first stage came back to Earth as planned about 8.5 minutes later, landing atop the SpaceX droneship "Of Course I Still Love You" in the Pacific Ocean. It was the 24th flight for this particular booster, which is designated B1082.

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, continued powering its way skyward. It's scheduled to deploy the 27 satellites in low Earth orbit 62 minutes after launch.

There are already quite a few of them up there. The Starlink network — by far the largest satellite constellation ever assembled — currently consists of more than 11,000 active spacecraft.

The Falcon 9 has now flown 101 times so far in 2026, and 78 of those launches have been Starlink missions. The workhorse rocket is on pace to fly about 155 times this year — quite a number, but a bit shy of its record of 165, which was set in 2025.

Falcon 9 Starlink missions have historically flown out of both Vandenberg and Florida's Space Coast (from NASA's Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, which are next door to each other). But Vandenberg will be the only Falcon 9 Starlink site from now on: SpaceX announced yesterday (Aug. 25) that it's pausing Florida Starlink launches until they can be performed by the company's Starship megarocket, which remains in development.

The rumors are true. SpaceX plans to retire its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket once the company's giant next-generation Starship begins regular operational flights.

SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 for the first time in 2010, and the rocket soon chiselled itself a place in spaceflight history. The Falcon 9 has lifted off nearly 700 times to date, and it's the first orbital rocket ever to land and refly its first-stage booster. Russia's Soyuz rocket, which has been in operation since 1957, is the only launch vehicle with more missions under its belt, but the Falcon 9 is on track to pass it next year.

However, "winding down Falcon" — both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, a triple-booster variant that has flown 12 times to date — is inevitable, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said in an Aug. 22 post on X. "Once Starship is flying reliably several times per week, it makes sense to shift … production resources to Starship to get launch rate to several times per day," he wrote.

The impact of Falcon 9's absence from the launch market can't yet be known, but industry reports suggest that SpaceX may discontinue all but a few Falcon 9 missions beginning in 2028. The ones that remain will likely include crew and resupply missions for NASA to the International Space Station (ISS), which is expected to continue flying until at least 2030, meaning that commercial operators will have to start looking to Starship to deliver their satellites to space.

When exactly SpaceX will begin to wind down Falcon 9 will depend on the continuing development of Starship. Unlike its predecessor, Starship is built for full reusability, with the rocket's Super Heavy booster and Ship upper stage both designed to return to Earth for recovery and reflight. (Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy upper stages are expendable.)

And Starship is bigger than Falcon 9, too. The current Version 3 (V3) Starship stands 408 feet (124.4 meters) tall, towering over the 230-foot tall (70 m) Falcon 9, and is capable of launching substantially heavier payloads to space. Starship is expected to be able to deliver more than 100 tons to low Earth orbit (LEO). By comparison, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy can carry about 25 tons and 63 tons to LEO, respectively.

The majority of Falcon 9 missions over the past few years have been dedicated to SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet network, with more than 300 launches since 2023 adding to the growing constellation of over 11,000 spacecraft. The more powerful next generation of Starlink satellites, however, are bigger, and designed to fit in Starship's payload bay, not atop the Falcon 9. And once Starship is launching reliably (and even before then), SpaceX plans to begin upgrading its Starlink network with the newer satellite version.

That will likely kick off an exponential upward trend for Starship launches. This happened with the Falcon 9, after all. SpaceX launched the rocket just 11 times in 2019, the year the company began assembling its Starlink constellation. In 2025, Falcon 9 flew a whopping 165 missions, and 122 of them were Starlink flights.

NASA has also contracted SpaceX to design a version of Starship for use as a lunar landing vehicle for the space agency's Artemis missions. A Starship V3 is in line to launch on the Artemis III mission next year, which will practice docking operability in LEO with NASA's Orion spacecraft. Starship has also been slated to deliver astronauts to the surface of the moon on Artemis IV in 2028. That's also when SpaceX has told NASA that it plans to end commercial Falcon 9 launches, according to Ars Technica.

One thing Starship has not yet been contracted or designed for is docking with the ISS. NASA is positioned to continue purchasing flights of SpaceX's cargo and Crew Dragon spacecraft to deliver astronauts and supplies to the space station through 2030, and would be hard pressed to shift those tasks to Starship. Cost and contract logistics aside, the mere size of Starship poses significant engineering risks outside the station's safety margins.

Regardless of the timeline for the ISS, SpaceX's planned sundowning of Falcon 9 also hinges on Starship's success. The launch vehicle has flown 13 suborbital test flights to date. Another is poised to lift off within the next month, and may be the rocket's first attempt at fully reaching orbit. But that's just one of many milestones that Starship must hit before it can begin "flying reliably several times per week," as Musk stipulated in his post.

That kind of turnaround time has already been achieved by Falcon 9, but building up Starship's infrastructure is a much bigger enterprise than the dozen or so successful test flights the vehicle has under its belt. And how quickly SpaceX can scale Starship to match Falcon 9's reliability will ultimately determine how soon the legacy rocket is largely phased out of commission.

Starlink launches may have become commonplace, but this one was definitely worth staying up for.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket topped with 29 Starlink internet satellites lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Tuesday (Aug. 25), at 5:33 a.m. EDT (0933 GMT).

It was the 100th Falcon 9 flight of 2026 and the record-breaking 37th mission for this rocket's first stage, a booster designated B1067.

The Falcon 9 is by far the busiest rocket in operation today. Last year, it flew 165 missions — more than all of the world's other orbital rockets combined. And all 165 of those flights were fully successful.

Extensive first-stage reuse is the Falcon 9's secret sauce, making it cheaper and more efficient to fly than its competitors. Those competitors are racing to catch up, however, and some are making strides. In the past six weeks, for example, two different Chinese rockets aced landings during orbital missions.

But neither one of those newcomers has made it back to the pad for a second flight. SpaceX, meanwhile, has six Falcon 9 boosters with at least 30 flights under their belts, led by B1067's 36. (The others are B1077 and B1078 with 30, B1069 with 32, B1063 with 34 and B1071 with 35).

And SpaceX plans to take reuse to even higher levels. The company's next-gen megarocket, Starship, is designed to be completely and rapidly reusable, with each vehicle capable of flying multiple times per day, according to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. (The Falcon 9 and its cousin the Falcon Heavy are only partially reusable; they have expendable upper stages.)

After launch, B1067 returned to Earth for recovery and yet more reuse. About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, the booster landed on the drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas," which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, continued on to deliver its 29 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit, deploying them there 61.5 minutes after launch.

Tuesday's liftoff was the 77th of 2026 devoted to building out Starlink, by far the largest satellite constellation ever assembled. It currently consists of more than 11,000 operational spacecraft, and that number is growing all the time.

The Falcon 9 isn't the only SpaceX rocket to have flown this year. The company has also launched one Falcon Heavy mission and two suborbital Starship test flights. Starship will try to go orbital for the first time on its next liftoff, which is expected in early to mid-September.

Poor weather has delayed the launch of China's latest moon mission.

According to reports, the growth of Tropical Depression Narra in the Gulf of Tonkin has prompted China's space agency to delay the liftoff of Chang'e 7 significantly — possibly until 2027.

"China's Chang'e 7 lunar probe does not meet launch conditions, and its launch therefore cannot take place during the planned window this year," the state-run Xinhua news agency reported today (Aug. 23), citing the China Manned Space Agency.

Chang'e 7 had originally been scheduled to launch today from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on the island of Hainan. But then Narra started brewing in the Gulf of Tonkin, just to the island's west.

Launching a rocket into a howling gale is less than ideal. Chinese space officials initially pushed the launch back a day, to Monday (Aug. 24), before concluding that the new target was unattainable as well.

It's now unclear when Chang'e 7 might lift off; messaging on the topic has been characteristically murky. (China is fairly tight-lipped about its space activities, revealing far less publicly than, say, NASA or the European Space Agency does. For example, China announces who's flying on its crewed missions just one day before liftoff.)

The Chang'e 7 launch requires a certain lineup of Earth and the moon, so it cannot simply occur as soon as the skies around Wenchang clear. Some online reports suggest that Chang'e 7 could lift off as soon as September, while others — including today's Xinua story — have it launching sometime in 2027.

Whenever it occurs, the liftoff will draw a lot of attention. Chang'e 7 is an ambitious and exciting mission, and it could have serious implications for lunar exploration down the road.

Chang'e 7 consists of an orbiter and a lander, which will likely touch down on the rim of Shackleton Crater, near the moon's south pole (though China has not announced an official landing site).

This region is thought to harbor lots of water ice, most of it on crater floors that have not seen the sun for billions of years. Chang'e 7's lander will deploy a rover and a hopping robot to hunt for this precious resource, which could help support human settlements in the area.

China aims to build such an outpost in the coming years, as does the United States, via NASA's Artemis program. U.S. officials have stressed the need for the nation to win this new space race so that it can establish the norms for living and working on Earth's nearest neighbor.

SpaceX launched another batch of its Starlink internet satellites this morning (Aug. 22) on a milestone mission for the company's Falcon rocket family.

A Falcon 9 carrying 27 Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California today at 3:25 a.m. EDT (0725 GMT; 12:25 a.m. local California time).

It was the 99th Falcon 9 liftoff of the year, and the 100th Falcon mission of 2026 overall. The other flight was performed by a Falcon Heavy, which lofted the telecom satellite Viasat-3 F3 in April.

Hitting the century mark at this point in the year is impressive. But SpaceX has a ways to go to equal its single-year Falcon launch record of 165, which was set in 2025. All of those were Falcon 9 missions.

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth today as planned. It touched down about 8.5 minutes after launch in the Pacific Ocean, atop the SpaceX droneship "Of Course I Still Love You." It was the ninth flight for this particular booster, which carries the designation B1100.

The 27 Starlink satellites, meanwhile, kept traveling to low Earth orbit aboard the Falcon 9's upper stage, deploying on schedule just under 62 minutes after launch.

Today's launch makes the largest-ever satellite constellation even bigger: Starlink already consists of more than 11,000 operational spacecraft.

As you might expect, Starlink satellites are SpaceX's most common payload; 76 of this year's 99 Falcon 9 flights have been dedicated Starlink missions.

And the number of SpaceX satellites is expected to rise considerably in the coming years. The company has said it wants to launch 100,000 of its next-gen Starlink V3 satellites and operate a constellation of one million data centers in Earth orbit. These spacecraft will fly atop SpaceX's Starship megarocket, which remains in development.

SpaceX is picking up the pace of preparations for the next launch of its giant Starship rocket.

On Wednesday night (Aug. 19), the company completed a single-engine static fire test with its Ship 41 vehicle, the upper stage that's in line to fly Starship's upcoming Flight 14 mission. As its name suggests, Flight 14 will be Starship's 14th test flight, but it will be the rocket's first launch into orbit, if all goes according to plan.

The recent engine burn was designed to prepare for that jaunt. "Starship completed a single engine static fire demonstrating a deorbit burn for upcoming orbital missions," SpaceX wrote in an X post on Thursday (Aug. 20).

Video included in the post shows Ship 41 standing at SpaceX's Massey's test site, near the company's Starbase facility in South Texas. The clip shows the moment of ignition of one of the spacecraft's six Raptor 3 engines, which burns for approximately 15 seconds.

SpaceX followed up Wednesday night's test with a full six-engine test on Thursday (Aug. 20). That burn lasted approximately 60 seconds, as seen in video posted by the company the next day.

With the completion of Ship 41's first static fires, SpaceX could be on track to launch Flight 14 sometime in early to mid-September. However, there are still a number of prelaunch activities for the ship and its Super Heavy first-stage booster to clear before SpaceX will declare them launch ready, and, with Flight 14 tasked with placing Starship in orbit for the first time, the company is likely to be extra cautious.

Flight 14 will be Starship's third launch of 2026, and the third to feature the upgraded "Version 3" (V3) of the vehicle, which SpaceX introduced in May. SpaceX is also modifying a Starship V3 to dock with NASA's Orion spacecraft as a part of the Artemis III mission to Earth orbit next year.

NASA contracted SpaceX as one of two commercial moon lander providers for the Artemis program. The agency plans to land astronauts on the surface of the moon aboard a Starship lunar landing vehicle on the Artemis IV mission in late 2028.

SpaceX had apparently originally intended to attempt a return-to-launch-site recovery for Ship 41, but company founder and CEO Elon Musk recently said that milestone will now likely happen "in a few months."

Ship 41 will instead likely attempt a soft ocean splashdown at the end of its flight, and its Super Heavy counterpart, Booster 21, is expected to do the same. SpaceX has returned three of its Super Heavy boosters to Starbase for successful catches using chopstick-like arms on the rocket's "Mechazilla" launch tower, and it has managed to refly two of those. But a V3 Super Heavy catch has not yet been attempted.

Returning and reflying both Starship stages is a key component in SpaceX's design for the giant rocket, which will be the largest, most powerful launch vehicle in history once the company works out all its kinks. If it can, Musk said on a recent earnings call that he expects the rocket to launch "at least one flight a day, possibly more." In an Aug. 20 X post, Musk said SpaceX aims to support 30 Starship launches per day, or more.

SpaceX launched yet another Starlink mission today (Aug. 21), sending 29 more of the broadband satellites to orbit from Florida's Space Coast.

The spacecraft flew aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, which lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 11:14 a.m. EDT (1514 GMT). That was a day later than planned; SpaceX scrubbed a liftoff attempt on Thursday (Aug. 20) for reasons that were not immediately clear.

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth as planned today, landing about 8.5 minutes after launch in the Atlantic Ocean atop the SpaceX droneship "A Shortfall of Gravitas." It was the 30th liftoff and touchdown for this particular booster, which is designated B1078.

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, continued hauling the Starlink satellites skyward. It will deploy the new batch into low Earth orbit 61.5 minutes after liftoff, if all goes to plan.

There are already quite a few operational Starlink spacecraft up there —nearly 11,000, in fact, according to astronomer and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.

Today's launch was the 98th Falcon 9 flight of the year already. Seventy-five of them have been dedicated Starlink missions.

SpaceX also has three other liftoffs under its belt in 2026 — one launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket and two test flights of its Starship megarocket, which is still in development.