{"id":855421,"date":"2026-08-12T14:08:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T14:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/855421\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T14:08:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T14:08:20","slug":"spacex-wraps-starlink-double-header-day-with-the-launch-of-24-starlink-satellites-from-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/855421\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX wraps Starlink double header day with the launch of 24 Starlink satellites from California"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just over 12 hours after its first liftoff of the day<\/a> out of Florida’s Space Coast, SpaceX has delivered a second batch of Starlink internet satellites to orbit on a rocket lifting off from the company’s California launch site.<\/p>\n

A Falcon 9<\/a> rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base<\/a> on Aug. 12, at 12:46 p.m. EDT (0346 GMT; 9:46 p.m. local time). The mission, Starlink Group 17-49, carried 24 of the broadband spacecraft to low Earth orbit<\/a> (LEO) to join SpaceX’s growing constellation of more than 10,000 satellites.<\/p>\n

About 8.5 minutes after clearing the tower, the Falcon 9’s first stage, Booster 1103 successfully landed on SpaceX’s “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship in the Pacific Ocean.” It was the fifth flight for this particular booster.<\/p>\n

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\"A\n<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9’s first stage is seen just after its drone-ship landing on Aug. 12, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)<\/p>\n

In addition to being its third Starlnk mission, B1103 also launched the NROL-179<\/a> and SDA-T1TL-E<\/a> in support of U.S. national defense.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Following separation from Falcon 9’s main booster, the rocket’s second stage flew onward to LEO, delivering its 24 Starlink satellites about one hour after liftoff.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Previous Booster B1103 launches<\/p>\n

Today’s liftoff was the 94th Falcon 9 launch of the year, 73 of which have delivered Starlink stacks to the growing constellation \u2014 the largest satellite constellation ever assembled.<\/p>\n

Starlink currently consists of more than 10,900 active satellites<\/a>, according to astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. But SpaceX has even bigger megaconstellations in mind: The company has filed to operate 100,000<\/a> of its bigger, more capable Starlink V3 satellites, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk<\/a> has also stated his intent to launch a million AI data center satellites<\/a> to Earth orbit as well.<\/p>\n

\"Space\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just over 12 hours after its first liftoff of the day out of Florida’s Space Coast, SpaceX has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":855422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,66,306],"class_list":["post-855421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/855422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}