SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites on company's 300th successful mission (video)

Mike Wall
·2 min read
7
A black-and-white spacex falcon 9 rocket launches into a night sky.
A black-and-white spacex falcon 9 rocket launches into a night sky.

SpaceX just notched another launch milestone.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Sunday (Jan. 14) at 8:52 p.m. EST (0152 GMT on Jan. 15).

Everything went smoothly, which SpaceX celebrated in a post on X later that evening.

"Falcon 9 delivers 23 @Starlink satellites to orbit from Florida — completing our 300th successful launch!" SpaceX wrote in the X post, which shared a few photos of the liftoff.

Related: Starlink satellite train: How to see and track it in the night sky

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 23 Starlink satellites on Jan. 14, 2024. It was the company's 300th successful launch.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 23 Starlink satellites on Jan. 14, 2024. It was the company's 300th successful launch.

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth about eight minutes after liftoff, successfully landing on the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

It was the 12th launch and landing for this booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. Among its previous flights were seven other Starlink missions.

The Falcon 9's upper stage continued hauling the 23 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit tonight, deploying them there about 64.5 minutes after liftoff.

close-up look at the orange fire from a rocket's first stage as it climbs into a night sky.
close-up look at the orange fire from a rocket's first stage as it climbs into a night sky.

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Sunday night's launch was the second part of a Starlink doubleheader: A Falcon 9 also lofted a Starlink batch from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base early Sunday morning.

Starlink is SpaceX's broadband megaconstellation. It currently consists of more than 5,250 operational spacecraft, but that number is increasing all the time, as Sunday's two liftoffs show.