SpaceX retains setting spaceflight data.
Elon Musk‘s firm launches way more incessantly than some other outfit, and it operates the biggest satellite tv for pc constellation ever assembled — the Starlink broadband community, which consists of practically 11,000 satellites (and counting).
On Saturday night (Aug. 15), SpaceX set one other mark, for the shortest time between orbital flights: It launched two Falcon 9 rockets simply 38 minutes aside, besting its outdated mark — set on Aug. 31, 2024 with two Starlink missions — by 27 minutes.
The primary liftoff, from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, occurred Saturday at 9:12 p.m. EDT (0112 GMT on Aug. 16) and carried eight satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO) for Louisiana-based telecom firm Globalstar.
All eight spacecraft had been deployed efficiently, separating over a six-minute span starting 56.5 minutes after liftoff, SpaceX announced via social media.
Whereas that Falcon 9 was powering its approach to LEO, one other one launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, on California’s central coast. That liftoff, at 9:50 p.m. EDT (6:50 p.m. native time; 0150 GMT on Aug. 16), kicked off a mission for the U.S. Space Force known as USSF-366.
We all know little or no about USSF-366, which is not stunning given its categorised standing. Nonetheless, rocket watchers have made just a few inferences from the restricted obtainable data.
“It’s presumably a batch of categorised LEO satellites for a U.S. authorities entity primarily based on SpaceX’s Starshield satellite tv for pc bus, primarily based on areas of rocket stage drop zones being actual matches with earlier Starlink Group 15 launches,” NextSpaceflight.com wrote in its mission description. (Starshield is a SpaceX undertaking that makes use of modified variations of Starlink craft to fly nationwide safety missions for the U.S. authorities.)
It is unclear when and the place the rocket’s higher stage will deploy the U.S.-366 payload(s); SpaceX’s mission description would not reveal that data. And the corporate ended its livestream shortly after the first-stage touchdown, as is typical for nationwide safety flights.
Each of Saturday’s missions featured profitable rocket landings. The Falcon 9 first stage that launched the Globalstar mission got here again for a landing at Cape Canaveral about eight minutes after launch. It was the 14th flight for that exact booster.
The us-366 Falcon 9 first stage, in the meantime, got here again to Earth about 8.5 minutes after its launch, touching down within the Pacific Ocean on the SpaceX droneship “Of Course I Nonetheless Love You.” That booster now has 18 missions beneath its belt.
Saturday’s doubleheader introduced the tally of Falcon 9 launches in 2026 to 96. The overwhelming majority of these — about 75% — have been Starlink missions.
