{"id":619982,"date":"2026-04-20T21:26:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T21:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/619982\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T21:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T21:26:11","slug":"600-rocket-landings-spacex-notches-another-milestone-during-sunday-starlink-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/619982\/","title":{"rendered":"600 rocket landings! SpaceX notches another milestone during Sunday Starlink launch"},"content":{"rendered":"

At SpaceX, what has gone up has now successfully come down 600 times.<\/p>\n

The company, which was founded by Elon Musk<\/a>, marked its 600th successful landing of one of its orbital-class rockets with the recovery of the first-stage booster that put a new batch of Starlink<\/a> satellites into low Earth orbit<\/a> on Sunday (April 19).<\/p>\n

“Falcon lands for the 600th time!” SpaceX wrote on social media on Sunday<\/a>. “Falcon 9 launches 25 Starlink satellites from California ahead of completing the 600th overall landing of an orbital-class rocket.”<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

\n

\"a\n<\/p>\n

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 25 Starlink satellites lifts off from Vandenberg Space Force Station in California on Sunday, April 19, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)<\/p>\n

Lifting off at 12:03 p.m. EDT (1603 GMT or 9:03 a.m. PDT local time) from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base<\/a>, the latest Falcon 9 rocket to fly deployed the Starlink broadband internet relay satellites (Group 17-22<\/a>) an hour and two minutes after leaving Southern California.<\/p>\n

The 25 spacecraft added to SpaceX’s megaconstellation, which numbers more than 10,275 satellites<\/a> circling the planet.<\/p>\n

\n

\"a\n<\/p>\n

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 25 Starlink satellites lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Station in California on April 19. The mission featured the 600th landing of a Falcon first stage. (Image credit: SpaceX)<\/p>\n

At about eight minutes into Sunday’s launch, the Falcon 9’s first stage (Booster B1097) returned to Earth, touching down on its four landing legs on the “Of Course I Still Love You<\/a>” droneship, which was stationed in the Pacific Ocean. In addition to being the 600th safe recovery of a Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy<\/a> rocket since 2015, it was the eighth landing for this particular booster.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The company reached 500 Falcon rocket landings<\/a> in September 2025. Sunday’s launch was SpaceX’s 47th Falcon 9 launch of the year and 630th overall.<\/p>\n

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At SpaceX, what has gone up has now successfully come down 600 times. The company, which was founded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":["post-619982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}