SpaceX completes 400th Falcon booster landing on mission carrying 27 Starlink satellites – Spaceflight Now

Update 11:44 a.m. EST (1644 UTC): SpaceX has landed the first stage booster on the drone ship.

SpaceX has launched its latest batch of Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Tuesday afternoon’s mission carried 27 second-generation Starlinks, a new record for this type of satellite.

The Falcon 9 rocket launched from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at 7:45 a.m. PST (10:45 p.m. EST, 1545 UTC). SpaceX was forced to abort a launch attempt on Sunday when a plane entered the exclusion zone 11 seconds before it was scheduled to take off. She did not give a reason for the Monday cleanup.



The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, tail number B1082, was launched for the tenth time. SpaceX previously used it to fly USSF-62, OneWeb 4 and seven previous batches of Starlink satellites.

It is one of four boosters still in service that were launched only from the West Coast.

Just over eight minutes into the mission, B1082 landed on SpaceX’s Of Course I Still Love You drone ship, marking the 117th booster landing on OCISLY and the 400th booster landing to date.

The Starlink 11-8 mission sent more second-generation satellites into orbit at once than previously possible. According to SpaceX’s 2024 Progress Report, the company said it has developed Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites. The company said that in addition to having new capabilities, they are also lighter and therefore can be rolled out more at once. SpaceX said its latest version of the V2 Mini is 22 percent lighter than the original V2 Mini.

“These satellites feature a new backhaul antenna powered by a dual-band chip called Doppio designed and built by SpaceX,” SpaceX wrote. “The satellites feature enhanced avionics, propulsion and power systems and are optimized for Falcon 9 to enable the launch of up to 29 satellites on each mission – six more satellites per launch than the original V2 Mini design.”

From connecting astronauts in space to providing high-speed internet to more than 4.6 million active customers here on Earth, this @Starlink The team is fully focused on expanding coverage, increasing speeds and reducing latency so we can connect as many as possible around the world pic.twitter.com/twBoSToUsK

– SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 16, 2025

It is unclear whether SpaceX launched any of these new satellites before the Starlink 11-8 mission. As of early 2024, SpaceX typically launched 23 Starlink satellites from Florida and 22 from Vandenberg, when the satellites with direct-to-cell capabilities were not yet on board.

The Starlink 6-39 mission, launched on February 25, 2024 on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, was the first to carry 24 Starlink V2 mini satellites, but there was no mention of any of them has been optimized.

It wasn’t until November 11, 2024 that another batch of 24 satellites launched, which again took place at Cape Canaveral. Since then, there have been six additional missions, each with 24 Starlink V2 mini satellites.