Southern Californians out on Saturday night for Valentine’s Day took a break from staring longingly into each other’s eyes to gaze at something else: a SpaceX rocket blazing across the early evening Southland sky.<\/p>\n
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket on Saturday night from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The rocket carried 24 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit, according to the company.<\/p>\n
Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet provider, has launched<\/a> about 11,000 Starlink broadband satellites into space since 2019, using its workhorse Falcon 9.<\/p>\n Read more: Shooting for the moon. How Elon Musk’s SpaceX is faring<\/a><\/p>\n At 7:03 p.m., SpaceX posted<\/a> to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that the 24 Starlink satellites had successfully been deployed.<\/p>\n SpaceX said on its launch page that residents in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties might experience one or more sonic booms during the launch, a phenomenon that has long upset residents<\/a> and raised concerns about the booms’ effect on nearby endangered species.<\/p>\n SpaceX has three more launches scheduled from Vandenberg this month, the next expected to take place Wednesday, according to the company’s site.<\/p>\n This was the fourth SpaceX Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg this month.<\/p>\n The Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage rocket. After its stage separation process Saturday night, the rocket’s first stage will land on the “Of Course I Still Love You” drone ship, which will be stationed in the Pacific Ocean, according to the company.<\/p>\n “Love is in the air,” one X user quipped<\/a>, “and so is Falcon 9.”<\/p>\n Times staff writer Laurence Darmiento contributed to this report.<\/p>\n