SpaceX flew its final Starlink mission of the month aboard a Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Sunday morning.
The Starlink 17-40 mission will add another 24 broadband internet satellites to SpaceX’s low Earth orbit constellation. The company has more than 10,700 satellites currently in obit in order to statistics tracked by astronomer and orbital tracker, Jonathan McDowell.
Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East occurred at 9:09 a.m. PDT (12:09 p.m. EDT / 1609 UTC). The rocket flew on a south-southwesterly trajectory upon leaving the pad.
SpaceX launched the Starlink 17-40 mission using the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1088, making its 17th flight. Previous missions for this booster were NROL-126, Transporter-12, SPHEREx, NROL-57, and 12 Starlink deliveries.
A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1088 landed on the drone ship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You’, positioned in the Pacific Ocean. If successful, this will be the 206th landing on this vessel and the 630th booster landing to date.
During the first half of 2026, has launched its Falcon 9 rockets a total of 75 times and of those, 59 were in support of its Starlink constellation.
Here’s a breakdown of SpaceX’s Starlink launches per month versus its total for that month:
- January – 9/13
- February – 11/12
- March – 13/15
- April – 9/11
- May – 8/11
- June – 10/13 (following the Starlink 17-40 launch)
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