Another SpaceX launch, another milestone.
The rocket’s first stage came back to Earth as planned about 8.5 minutes after liftoff tonight, touching down in the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX droneship “Just Read the Instructions.” It was the 23rd flight for this particular booster, which carries the designation 1080.
The Falcon 9’s upper stage, meanwhile, continued hauling the Starlink craft toward low Earth orbit, where they’ll be deployed about 65 minutes after launch.
‘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.
Elon Musk‘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 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.
SpaceX has also launched five suborbital test flights of its giant Starship Mars rocket in 2025, all of them from its Starbase site in South Texas.