{"id":630312,"date":"2026-09-20T08:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T08:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/630312\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T08:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T08:24:11","slug":"spacex-launches-27-starlink-satellites-to-orbit-from-california-photos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/630312\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX launches 27 Starlink satellites to orbit from California (photos)"},"content":{"rendered":"

SpaceX launched yet another batch of its Starlink broadband satellites to orbit today (Sept. 19).<\/p>\n

A Falcon 9<\/a> rocket carrying 27 Starlink<\/a> craft lifted off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base<\/a> today at 9:47 p.m. EDT (6:47 p.m. local time; 0147 GMT on Sept. 20).<\/p>\n

The rocket’s first stage returned to Earth about 8.5 minutes later, touching down in the Pacific Ocean atop the SpaceX<\/a> drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You.” It was the 17th flight for this particular booster, which is designated 1093.<\/p>\n

\n

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

The upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, before it deployed its payload of 27 Starlink satellites into orbit on Sept. 19, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9’s upper stage hauled the 27 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit<\/a>, deploying them as planned about 62 minutes after launch.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There were already a lot of them up there: The ever-growing Starlink megaconstellation currently consists of more than 11,100 active spacecraft, according to<\/a> astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Previous Booster 1093 launches<\/p>\n

Saturday’s launch was the 107th Falcon 9 mission of 2026, and the 81st of the year dedicated to building out the Starlink network.<\/p>\n

Those numbers are impressive, but they don’t quite match SpaceX’s record-breaking 2025 cadence: Last year, the Falcon 9 flew 165 times<\/a>, and 122 of those were Starlink missions. (If SpaceX maintains its current rates this year, 2026 will see a total of 149 Falcon 9 launches, 113 of which are Starlink flights.)<\/p>\n

\"Space\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SpaceX launched yet another batch of its Starlink broadband satellites to orbit today (Sept. 19). A Falcon 9…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,82,247],"class_list":["post-630312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}