{"id":63340,"date":"2026-07-28T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/?guid=477e2187bde698216c3a5c60c4e57e89"},"modified":"2026-07-28T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T15:00:00","slug":"spacex-launches-24-starlink-satellites-to-orbit-in-wake-of-starship-test-flight-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/2026\/07\/28\/spacex-launches-24-starlink-satellites-to-orbit-in-wake-of-starship-test-flight-video\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites to orbit in wake of Starship test flight (video)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n                            \n                            <article>\n                                <iframe src=\"https:\/\/content.jwplatform.com\/players\/WhdCQAel.html\" id=\"WhdCQAel\" title=\"SpaceX launches & deploys 24 Starlink satellites from California, nails landing\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"auto\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><p>SpaceX launched 24 more satellites for its Starlink network on Saturday (July 25), a day after demonstrating it could do the same on its next-gen rocket.<\/p><p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/18962-spacex-falcon-9.html\"><u>Falcon 9<\/u><\/a> rocket carrying <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spacex.com\/launches\/sl-17-51\"  rel=\"nofollow\"><u>Starlink group 17-51<\/u><\/a> lifted off at 11:51 a.m. EDT (1521 GMT or 8:51 a.m. PDT local time) on Saturday from Space Launch Complex 4 East at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/34147-vandenberg-air-force-base.html\"><u>Vandenberg Space Force Base<\/u><\/a> in California. <\/p><p>About an hour later, the 24 broadband internet satellites were deployed into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/low-earth-orbit\"><u>low Earth orbit<\/u><\/a> (LEO), as planned.<\/p><div  class=\"fancy-box\"><div class=\"fancy_box-title\">Previous Booster B1100 launches<\/div><div class=\"fancy_box_body\"><p class=\"fancy-box__body-text\"><a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/space-exploration\/launches-spacecraft\/spacex-nrol-105-spy-satellite-mission-launch\"><strong>NROL-105<\/strong><\/a><strong> | 6 Starlink missions<\/strong><\/p><\/div><\/div><p>The launch marked the eighth flight of the Falcon's 9 first stage (Booster 1100), which touched down on the \"Of Course I Still Love You\" droneship, stationed in the Pacific Ocean.<\/p><p>The successful launch raised the total number of active Starlink satellites to 10,865, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/planet4589.org\/space\/con\/star\/stats.html\"  rel=\"nofollow\"><u>satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell<\/u><\/a>. That number had been 20 units higher for about 20 minutes on Friday, when <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/18853-spacex.html\"><u>SpaceX<\/u><\/a> conducted a deployment and operations trial during the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/space-exploration\/launches-spacecraft\/starship-in-space-see-highlights-of-spacex-megarockets-epic-flight-13-test-launch-video\"><u>13th test flight of its Starship<\/u><\/a> launch vehicle.<\/p><p>The Starship test was planned to be short-lived but was successful in providing data to support NASA's decision to fly Starlink systems on its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/artemis-3-moon-landing-mission\"><u>Artemis III<\/u><\/a> crewed mission to LEO, which is scheduled to fly next year.<\/p><p>Saturday's launch was SpaceX's 87th Falcon 9 mission of the year.<\/p>\n                                                            <\/article>\n                            \n                        ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 24 Starlink satellites lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Saturday, July 25, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":628,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2799,1263],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-launches-amp-spacecraft","category-space-exploration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63340"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/628"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63340"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63341,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63340\/revisions\/63341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}