SpaceX had begun and ended the day with satellite launches across the country, having launched two Falcon 9 rockets soaring, first from Florida before sunrise on Tuesday, and then from California after sunset the same day local time. The company said both launches were successful.
The first launch involved 29 of the broadband internet relay units, Starlink group 10-24, at 5:23 a.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. About 19 hours later, at 9:29 p.m. PDT, 25 more Starlink satellites, group 17-27, lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in Southern California.
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The Falcon 9 upper stage deployed its cargo around an hour after each launch, sending its satellites on track to join the SpaceX low Earth orbit megaconstellation.
Both missions‘ Falcon 9 rocket first stages made it back to Earth to be reissued. Booster B1080 completed its 26th flight by landing on the droneship “Just Read the Instructions” based in the Atlantic Ocean. The other booster, Booster 1082 landed on “Of Course I Still Love You” stationed in the Pacific Ocean, raising its reuse tally to 21 flights.
With these launches, SpaceX’s Starlink network totaled more than 10,200 satellites, according to tracker Jonathan McDowell. The Vandeberg launch was SpaceX’s 46th of the year out of 629 Falcon 9 missions 2010.
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The launch occurred weeks after SpaceX took a major step towards going public. According to reports, the company confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering. The move puts SpaceX in a position to potentially outpace rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic in the race to tap public markets.
Sources suggest that SpaceX may target a valuation of more than $1.75 trillion, making it one of the largest stock market listings ever. The filing follows SpaceX’s merger with Musk’s AI venture, xAI, in a deal that valued SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion.
Earlier this year, a SpaceX rocket was launched from Florida on Friday with a crew of four. The crew headed to the International Space Station for an eight-month science mission in microgravity. This mission, which was dubbed Crew-12 marks the twelfth long-duration ISS team flown by NASA on a SpaceX rocket, ever since the private rocket firm started launching U.S. astronauts.