SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base

SpaceX put 24 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base on June 28, firing a Falcon 9 from Space Launch Complex 4 East at 9:09 a.m. PDT, 12:09 p.m. EDT. The mission, Starlink 17-40, added another batch to the company’s expanding broadband network and showed how routine Starlink deployments have become in the industrialization of low-Earth orbit.

The first stage on the flight was booster B1088, which flew for the 17th time after earlier missions including NROL-126, Transporter-12, SPHEREx, NROL-57 and 12 prior Starlink launches. SpaceX targeted a landing on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean, part of a recovery system that lets the company keep reusing Falcon 9 hardware while maintaining a fast launch cadence.

By the end of June, SpaceX had completed 75 Falcon 9 launches in the first half of 2026, 59 of them for Starlink. Astronomer Jonathan McDowell has counted more than 10,700 satellites in orbit, a scale that has turned low-Earth orbit into a crowded commercial zone. The pace underscores SpaceX’s launch dominance and the extent to which Starlink has become the company’s central industrial output, not just a side business.

The launch also carried local consequences. SpaceX warned that residents of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties could hear one or more sonic booms, depending on weather and atmospheric conditions. That warning has become familiar along the Central Coast, where Vandenberg missions now arrive with regularity and with public attention well beyond the launch site itself.

The June 28 flight came after a June 11 Starlink launch from Vandenberg that used a first stage on its 34th flight, another marker of how aggressively SpaceX is stretching the life of its rockets. It also followed an April settlement between SpaceX and the California Coastal Commission over the agency’s attempt to regulate launch cadence at Vandenberg, a dispute that put the pace of commercial space operations and the pressure on the coastline into sharper focus.