SpaceX landed a rocket in The Bahamas for the second time ever on Thursday (Feb. 19).
A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 29 of SpaceX's Starlink broadband satellites launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 8:41 p.m. EST (0141 GMT on Feb. 20).
According to plan, the Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth a little over eight minutes later. It touched down on the SpaceX droneship "Just Read the Instructions," which was stationed in The Bahamas' Exuma Sound.
It was just the second SpaceX landing in Bahamian waters. The first occurred in February 2025, also during a Starlink launch.
Most Falcon 9 boosters that launch from the Space Coast touch down farther north, in the open waters of the Atlantic. But landing near The Bahamas offers advantages.
"Our new landing collaboration with The Bahamas will enable Falcon 9 to launch to new orbital trajectories," SpaceX wrote via X in February 2025.
Less than a month later, however, the upper stage of SpaceX's Starship megarocket broke apart over the Caribbean during a test flight, raining debris down on The Bahamas. The nation put the SpaceX partnership on hold in April 2025, saying it wanted to perform an environmental assessment of all rocket landings in the region.
Crew-5 | GPS III Space Vehicle 06 | Inmarsat I6-F2 | CRS-28 | Intelsat G-37 | NG-20 | TD7 15 | 18 Starlink missions
That work is complete. The Civil Aviation Authority of The Bahamas announced on Tuesday (Feb. 17) that it had cleared SpaceX to land rockets in Exuma Sound once again.
Thursday's touchdown was the 26th for this particular Falcon 9 first stage, which carries the designation 1077. The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, was on track to deploy the 29 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit about 64 minutes after liftoff.
The spacecraft will join nearly 9,700 other satellites in the Starlink megaconstellation, by far the largest off-Earth network ever assembled.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 9:30 p.m. ET on Feb. 19 with news of successful launch and rocket landing.
