SpaceX notched two big milestones on a single Falcon 9 liftoff today (Oct. 19).
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 28 Starlink internet satellites lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 3:24 p.m. EDT (1924 GMT; 12:24 p.m. local California time).
Those 28 included the 10,000th Starlink spacecraft ever to reach orbit, which a SpaceX employee noted on the company's launch webcast: "From Tintin to 10,000! Go Starlink, go Falcon, go SpaceX!"
It was also the 132nd Falcon 9 liftoff of the year, equaling the mark set by the rocket last year — and there are still nearly 2.5 months to go in 2025.
SpaceX launched its first two Starlink prototypes — known as Tintin A and Tintin B — to low Earth orbit (LEO) in February 2018, then began building the megaconstellation in earnest 15 months later. The company offered Starlink service for the first time with a public beta test in October 2020 and started a commercial rollout the next year.
Starlink now provides service to millions of customers around the world, and SpaceX continues to beef up that product by sending more and more satellites to the final frontier.
The pace has reached extraordinary levels lately: SpaceX launched 89 Starlink missions in 2024 and has already exceeded that number this year. And don't expect it to stop anytime soon: SpaceX already has permission to loft 12,000 Starlink satellites, and the megaconstellation could eventually consist of more than 30,000 spacecraft.
Most of the Starlink satellites that SpaceX has launched remain active — 8,608 are currently operational, according to satellite tracker and astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. Most of the others have been deorbited, guided down to burn up in Earth's atmosphere. (Each Starlink satellite has an operational life of about five years.)
NROL-126 | Transporter-12 | SPHEREx | NROL-57 | 6 Starlink missions
The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth as planned today about 8.5 minutes after liftoff, landing in the Pacific Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You." It was the 11th launch and touchdown for this particular booster, which carries the designation 1088.
The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, deployed the Starlink satellites on schedule an hour after liftoff.
This launch was the second of the day for SpaceX; less than two hours earlier, another Falcon 9 sent 28 more Starlink satellites up from Florida's Space Coast. That earlier liftoff was the 31st for that Falcon 9's first stage, setting a new reuse record.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:35 p.m. ET on Oct. 19 with news of successful launch and rocket landing, then again at 5:05 p.m. ET with news of satellite deploy and to note that this mission carried the 10,000th Starlink satellite to reach orbit.
