Update Jan. 29, 2:10 p.m. EST (1910 UTC): SpaceX confirmed deployment of the Starlink .
SpaceX launched what is scheduled to be its penultimate Falcon 9 rocket of the month with a mid-morning flight from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Thursday.
The Starlink 17-19 mission added another 25 satellites to its megaconstellation in low Earth orbit. Among the satellites was the 11,000th Starlink satellite launched by the company since its first batch of production satellites were flown in May 2019.
Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East happened at 9:53:20 a.m. PST (12:53:20 p.m. EST / 1753:20 UTC). The rocket will fly on a south-southwest trajectory upon leaving the pad.
SpaceX launched the mission using the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number 1082. This was its 19th flight after launching missions, like USSF-62, NROL-145 and OneWeb Launch 20.
Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1082 landed on the drone ship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You.’ This was the 174th touchdown on this vessel and the 565th booster landing to date.
So far in 2026, SpaceX launched seven batches of Starlink satellites between its pads at Vandenberg Space Force Base and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. With those launches, it added 195 satellites to LEO.
