Updated
Updated · Spaceflight Now · Aug 21
SpaceX Lands Falcon 9 After 100th Orbital Mission, Adding 29 Starlink Satellites
Updated
Updated · Spaceflight Now · Aug 21

SpaceX Lands Falcon 9 After 100th Orbital Mission, Adding 29 Starlink Satellites

3 articles · Updated · Spaceflight Now · Aug 21

Summary

  • B1100 touched down on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You about 8.5 minutes after liftoff, capping SpaceX’s 100th orbital mission of 2026.
  • The Falcon 9 launched from Vandenberg at 12:25 a.m. PDT on the Starlink 15-20 mission, deploying 29 broadband satellites into low Earth orbit.
  • B1100 was flying for the ninth time after one NRO mission and seven earlier Starlink launches, underscoring SpaceX’s continued booster reuse.
  • The landing was the 220th on that droneship and the 653rd Falcon booster recovery overall, as Elon Musk said Starlink now has more than 11,000 satellites in orbit.

Insights

As SpaceX deploys two-thirds of all active global satellites, has a single private corporation effectively monopolized low Earth orbit?
Will the unstoppable launch cadence of these broadband megaconstellations eventually blind our ground-based telescopes to the rest of the universe?
With over 11,000 satellites now in orbit, could the constant fiery deorbiting of aging hardware trigger unforeseen climate consequences?