SpaceX Launches its Starlink Mission on Monday Night, Marking the 175th Falcon 9 Flight from Cape Canaveral

23 Starlink satellites were carried aboard a Falcon 9 rocket that SpaceX launched on Monday night from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. From its workhorse pad, SpaceX has now completed 175 flights, including this one.

Starting from Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40), the Starlink 6-46 mission was launched at 7:42 p.m. EDT (2342 UTC). 2024 saw the launch of 19 missions from Florida, including this one.

Tail number B1078 in the SpaceX fleet, the Falcon 9 first stage rocket that is assisting with this mission, made its eighth flight. The O3b mPOWER 3 & 4 satellites from SES, the USSF-124 mission, four Starlink flights, and NASA’s Crew-6 mission were all previously launched by it.

After taking off, B1078 touched down on the SpaceX droneship “A Shortfall of Gravitas” around eight and a half minutes later. This was the 228th booster landing and the 62nd landing on ASOG.

Astrophysicist and astronomer Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has been tracking the number of satellites in SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, and he has determined that the constellation will eventually number 5,680. To far, almost 6,000 Starlink satellites have been launched.

Ship 29, the upper stage vehicle that will be utilized during the fourth integrated flight test (IFT-4) of SpaceX’s Starship rocket, had a static fire test earlier in the day in Texas.