A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched for a record-breaking 36th time early Thursday morning (July 9).
The Falcon 9 lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday at 5:25 a.m. EDT (0925 GMT), carrying 29 of the company’s Starlink broadband satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO).
This particular booster, known as 1067, has already completed 35 orbital missions, more than any other SpaceX rocket in history. The overall record is held by NASA’s space shuttle Discovery, which flew to orbit and back 39 times.
Thursday’s flight extended Booster 1067’s company record. The rocket returned to Earth about 8.5 minutes after liftoff, landing on the SpaceX drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas” stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
The Falcon 9’s upper stage, meanwhile, will haul the 29 Starlink satellites to LEO, deploying them there 63.5 minutes after launch.
CRS-22 | Crew-3 | Turksat 5B | Crew-4 | CRS-25 | Eutelsat HOTBIRD 13G | O3B mPOWER | PSN SATRIA | Telkomsat Marah Putih 2 | Galileo L13 | Koreasat-6A | 24 Starlink missions
Thursday’s launch was already the 80th Falcon 9 mission of the year. About 80% of the rocket’s 2026 flights have been devoted to building out Starlink, by far the largest satellite network ever assembled.
The megaconstellation currently consists of more than 10,700 active satellites, according to tracker Jonathan McDowell. And, as the upcoming launch shows, that number is growing all the time.
