{"id":251780,"date":"2026-01-26T01:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T01:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/251780\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T01:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T01:12:08","slug":"spacex-launches-25-starlink-satellites-to-polar-low-earth-orbit-spaceflight-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/251780\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX launches 25 Starlink satellites to polar, low Earth orbit \u2013 Spaceflight Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-72423\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/20260125_Starlink_17-20_liftoff-1.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"678\" height=\"398\"  \/>A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base on Sunday, Jan. 26, 2026, to begin the Starlink 17-20 mission. Image: SpaceX<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX launched 25 of its Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites from California on Sunday morning.<\/p>\n<p>The Starlink 17-20 mission sent the broadband satellites into a polar low Earth orbit. The Falcon 9 rocket flew on a southerly trajectory upon leaving Vandenberg Space Force Base.<\/p>\n<p>Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East happened at 9:30 a.m. PST (12:30 p.m. EST \/ 1730 UTC).<\/p>\n<p>\ufeff<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX launched the mission using the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number 1097. This was its sixth flight after launching Sentinel-6B, the Twilight ride share and three batches of Starlink satellites.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1097 landed on the drone ship, \u2018Of Course I Still Love You.\u2019 This was the 173rd landing on this vessel and the 563rd booster landing for SpaceX to date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-251780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}