The Starlink 15-18 mission lifts off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Oct. 30, 2026, local time. Image: SpaceX.
Update: Oct. 31, 12:25 a.m. EDT (0425 UTC): SpaceX landed its first stage booster on the droneship.
SpaceX capped off the month of October with the launch of a Starlink mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Friday night. The flight was the 700th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket to date.
The Starlink 15-18 mission on the eve of Halloween will add another 27 broadband internet satellites to the company’s low Earth orbit constellation.
Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East happened at 9:04 p.m. PDT (12:04 a.m. EDT / 0404 UTC). The rocket flew on a southeasterly trajectory upon leaving the pad.
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SpaceX launched the mission using the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number 1093. This was its 18th flight following the launches of Transporter-16, two missions for the Space Development Agency, and 14 batches of Starlink satellites.
Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1093 landed on the droneship, Of Course I Still Love You, positioned in the Pacific Ocean. This was the 231st landing on this vessel and the 675th Falcon booster landing to date.
Winding down Falcon, ramping up Starship
The launch on the eve of Halloween was SpaceX’s 11th and final orbital flight in October. While that number of launches in a calendar month far exceeds that achieved by other launch providers, it comes as SpaceX is starting to wind down the Falcon program as it turns its focus to Starship.
NASA and others have publicly acknowledged that SpaceX looking to end offering the Falcon 9 for commercial and government missions in the next few years. The company’s decreasing launch rate reflects this change.
The Starlink 15-16 launch on Oct. 27 was the first time since July 2025 that SpaceX’s launch rate dropped below 150 orbital launches in a 365-day period. For comparison, at its peak, SpaceX reached a peak of 171 orbital launches in 365 days in December 2025.
In August, SpaceX ceased flying Starlink missions from Florida using its Falcon 9 rockets. A smattering of launches have flown from the Sunshine State since, including NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13, CRS-35, and Bandwagon-5, which flew in October.
This is the breakdown of all of SpaceX’s orbital launches over the course of 2026 across Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Kennedy Space Center, Starbase, and Vandenberg Space Force Base:
- January – 13 total (6 CCSFS, 1 KSC, 6 VSFB)
- February – 12 total (6 CCSFS, 6 VSFB)
- March – 15 total (8 CCSFS, 7 VSFB)
- April – 12 total (4 CCSFS, 1 KSC, 7 VSFB)
- May – 11 total (5 CCSFS, 6 VSFB)
- June – 13 total (5 CCSFS, 9 VSFB)
- July – 13 total (5 CCSFS, 8 VSFB)
- August – 13 total (5 CCSFS, 1 KSC, 7 VSFB)
- September – 8 total (1 CCSFS, 1 Starbase, 6 VSFB)
- October – 10 currently (3 CCSFS, 1 KSC, 6 VSFB)
SpaceX is expected to start launching orbital Starship missions on a regular basis beginning in 2027. During the third quarter earnings call earlier this month, SpaceX founder Elon Musk pointed to the anticipated ramp up in Starship launch cadence.
“We expect Starship to fly weekly at some point in the first half next year and then second half next year, twice weekly or maybe even more frequently by the end of next year,” Musk said. “The rate at which we launch Starship will increase dramatically as we solve rapid and complete reusability.”
Musk went onto state in that call that SpaceX’s plan to attempt a catch of their Starship upper stage during the next flight of the more than 400-foot-tall rocket. That mission, Starship Flight 15, is anticipated to launch in mid-November from Starbase, Texas.
