SpaceX landed a rocket in The Bahamas for the second time ever on Thursday (Feb. 19).

A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 29 of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband satellites launched from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 8:41 p.m. EST (0141 GMT on Feb. 20).

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A black and white SpaceX rocket stands on a landing drone ship off the coast of the Bahamas on Feb. 18, 2025.

A Falcon 9 first stage rests on the deck of a SpaceX drone ship in Exuma Sound after making the company’s first-ever Bahamas landing on Feb. 18, 2025. (Image credit: SpaceX)

It was just the second SpaceX landing in Bahamian waters. The first occurred in February 2025, also during a Starlink launch.

wrote via X in February 2025.

Less than a month later, however, the upper stage of SpaceX’s Starship megarocket broke apart over the Caribbean during a test flight, raining debris down on The Bahamas. The nation put the SpaceX partnership on hold in April 2025, saying it wanted to perform an environmental assessment of all rocket landings in the region.

a white and black rocket lifts off into the night sky as its orange-white engine plume lights its launch pad below.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 29 Starlink satellites launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)

Previous Booster 1077 launches

That work is complete. The Civil Aviation Authority of The Bahamas announced on Tuesday (Feb. 17) that it had cleared SpaceX to land rockets in Exuma Sound once again.

Thursday’s touchdown was the 26th for this particular Falcon 9 first stage, which carries the designation 1077. The rocket’s upper stage, meanwhile, was on track to deploy the 29 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit about 64 minutes after liftoff.

The spacecraft will join nearly 9,700 other satellites in the Starlink megaconstellation, by far the largest off-Earth network ever assembled.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 9:30 p.m. ET on Feb. 19 with news of successful launch and rocket landing.