{"id":282546,"date":"2026-04-23T20:15:48","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T20:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/282546\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T20:15:48","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T20:15:48","slug":"photographer-captures-spacex-rocket-soaring-across-the-orange-county-sky-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/282546\/","title":{"rendered":"Photographer captures SpaceX rocket soaring across the Orange County sky \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Could Richard Henry Dana Jr., author of the famed \u201cTwo Years Before the Mast\u201d in the 1800s, ever imagine that rockets would someday be soaring above the cliffs and sea of the Dana Point he described in his novel?<\/p>\n<p>That was what photographer Tony Prince said he pondered as he documented the latest SpaceX effort to send Starlink satellites out to Earth\u2019s orbit. The Falcon 9 launched Wednesday, April 23, from Vandenberg Space Force Base and traveled high across the horizon for those watching from the city\u2019s shore.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" lazyautosizes lazyload\" alt=\"The latest SpaceX effort sent Starlink satellites out to Earth's orbit, the Falcon 9 launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base and passing above the ocean across Southern California. (Photo courtesy of Tony Prince)\" width=\"6749\" data- src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/OCR-L-SPACEX-0424-01.jpg\" data-attachment-id=\"11570730\" \/>The latest SpaceX effort sent Starlink satellites out to Earth\u2019s orbit, the Falcon 9 launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base and passing above the ocean across Southern California. (Photo courtesy of Tony Prince)<\/p>\n<p>The 8:23 p.m. rocket launch was early enough in the night for spectators across the region to see the launch, the sky\u2019s hue just right as the last light of the day added to the backdrop. Prince set up his camera to have the statue of the author in the Dana Point Harbor in the foreground as the rocket, with its long contrail, passed.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/2026\/04\/23\/live-coverage-spacex-to-launch-25-starlink-satellites-on-falcon-9-rocket-from-vandenberg-sfb-3\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Spaceflight Now,<\/a> it was the 40th Starlink mission of the year. The Starlink 17-14 mission will add another 24 broadband internet satellites to the company\u2019s low Earth orbit constellation, which consists of more than 10,200 spacecraft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Could Richard Henry Dana Jr., author of the famed \u201cTwo Years Before the Mast\u201d in the 1800s, ever&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,1785,7,12,23,611,18174,136],"class_list":["post-282546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-beaches","tag-california","tag-dana-point","tag-local-news","tag-orange-county","tag-spacex","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}