Another SpaceX launch, another milestone.<\/p>\n
A Falcon 9<\/a> rocket launched from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station<\/a> tonight (Nov. 20) at 10:39 p.m. EST (0339 GMT on Nov. 21), carrying 29 of SpaceX’s Starlink<\/a> internet satellites to orbit.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was the 100th liftoff of the year from the Sunshine State, a nice round number that had never been reached before.<\/p>\n Best picks for you<\/p>\n The rocket’s first stage came back to Earth<\/a> as planned about 8.5 minutes after liftoff tonight, touching down in the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX<\/a> droneship “Just Read the Instructions.” It was the 23rd flight for this particular booster, which carries the designation 1080.<\/p>\n The Falcon 9’s upper stage, meanwhile, continued hauling the Starlink craft toward low Earth orbit<\/a>, where they’ll be deployed about 65 minutes after launch.<\/p>\n ‘SpaceX is responsible for the vast majority of this year’s record-breaking rocket traffic from the Space Coast, which features two side-by-side spaceports: Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n Elon Musk<\/a>‘s company has now launched a total of 149 Falcon 9 missions in 2025, more than 90 of them from Florida. (The others have flown from Vandenberg Space Force Base<\/a> in California.) That total, which increases every other day or so, is a record; the previous high, set in 2024, was 132 Falcon 9 launches.<\/p>\n