Space.com reports it was Falcon 9’s first Starlink mission since September 19.
Space.com reports SpaceX launched 27 Starlink broadband satellites to orbit on October 12, the first such Falcon 9 mission since September 19. NASASpaceflight identified the flight as Starlink 15-25 and reported its launch from Vandenberg’s SLC-4E pad.
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SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 from California on October 12 carrying 27 Starlink broadband satellites. The Starlink 15-25 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 5:28 p.m. PDT.
NASASpaceflight identified the rocket's first stage as booster B1088 and described the launch as that stage's 20th flight. Space.com reported that the satellites reached orbit and called the flight Falcon 9's first Starlink mission since September 19, ending a gap of a little more than three weeks between those launches.
After liftoff, Falcon 9 headed south along the California coast toward a 70-degree-inclination orbit. The first stage separated from the upper stage and returned toward the Pacific, where Spaceflight Now reported that it landed on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You about eight and a half minutes after launch.
B1088 had already flown a mix of national-security, science, rideshare and Starlink missions. Its earlier flights included NROL-126, Transporter-12, NASA's SPHEREx space telescope, NROL-57 and USSF-366, plus 14 previous Starlink delivery missions, according to Spaceflight Now.
The official SpaceX mission timeline laid out the sequence from stage separation through the booster's entry and landing burns. It placed the first-stage landing at about eight minutes and 21 seconds after liftoff, followed by a short second burn of the upper-stage engine roughly 53 minutes into the flight.
SpaceX's timeline scheduled satellite deployment for about one hour and two minutes after launch. Spaceflight Now said the 27 spacecraft were Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites and were targeted for deployment into an initial orbit about 266 kilometers above Earth.
Starlink satellites operate in low Earth orbit as part of SpaceX's broadband network. On this flight, the rapid booster recovery and the upper stage's later deployment sequence split the mission into two distinct jobs: returning a heavily reused first stage for another potential flight while carrying the latest batch onward to orbit.
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