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 evening on a Falcon 9 rocket launch.
The mission dubbed Starlink 17-7 was the fourth and final 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 using the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1082, which flew for a 15th time. It previously launched two national security payloads, a batch of OneWeb broadband Internet satellites and 15 previous 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 landing on this vessel and the 496th booster landing to date.
Prior to Friday’s launch, SpaceX launched 27 Starlink missions from Vandenberg in 2025 out of a total of 39 Falcon 9 launches. All told, the company launched 106 orbital missions this year as it aims for 170 such launches by year’s end.
SpaceX continues to bolster its low Earth orbit Starlink constellation as it rolls out the service to more countries and territories around the world. According to numbers tracked by astronomer and expert orbital tracker, Jonathan McDowell, there are more than 8,200 Starlink satellites on orbit.
