SPACE reports, “A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 29 Starlink satellites lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. It was “a new record for a “flight-proven” booster, landing for the 32nd time after helping loft Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit.”
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SpaceX launches 29 Starlink satellites from Kennedy Space Center on Dec. 8 at 5:26 p.m. EST. (Launch occurs at the 57:23 mark)
SPACE reports, “A Falcon 9 carrying 28 of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband satellites lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station [Sunday] at 1:39 p.m. EDT (1639 GMT). It was the record-breaking 31st mission for this Falcon 9’s first stage, a booster designated 1067.”
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Spaceflight Now reports, “Update 5:20 a.m. EDT: SpaceX is scrubbing the Starlink 9-5 launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base to allow more time to review the data from the B1062 landing failure. For the first time in more than three years, SpaceX lost one of its reusable Falcon 9 boosters during a landing attempt amid the Starlink 8-6 mission on Wednesday morning. As it was touching down on the droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas,’ a green flash could be seen around the Merlin engines before the engine section was engulfed in flames and the booster toppled over and exploded.”
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SpaceX Falcon 9 Booster Explodes on Droneship (1:16:36 mark)
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SPACE reported that SpaceX “closed out 2023 with a fiery double test of its next Starship megarocket booster and spacecraft…, sharing some stunning videos of both vehicles in the process.” The dual test of engines “on the giant Starship and Super Heavy rocket stages at SpaceX’s Starbase proving ground in Boca Chica, Texas on Friday comes as the company prepares for its third Starship launch test, which is expected in early 2024.” The test, which “lasted about 10 seconds, successfully fired all 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster, which serves as the first stage of the Starship rocket, the world’s largest and most powerful booster.” SpaceX “confirmed the successful test of the Super Heavy Booster 10, as well as a separate test of one Raptor engine on the Starship Ship 28 that will ride atop Super Heavy Booster 10 during the upcoming test flight.” That Starship test “was aimed at demonstrating the Raptor engine’s restart capabilities in space, the company said.”
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Spaceflight Now reports that SpaceX “raised a veteran Falcon 9 booster vertical on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral late Thursday, ready for a record-setting 12th mission Friday night with 53 more Starlink internet satellites.” The launch “will mark the 12th flight of a Falcon 9 booster that debuted in March 2019 with the unpiloted test flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, which paved the way for subsequent SpaceX launches with astronauts. This booster, designated B1051, has launched from all three of SpaceX’s active pads in Florida and California.”
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Space News reports that on Thursday, SpaceX is scheduled to launch a GPS 3 satellite atop its Falcon 9 rocket. The launch will mark the “first national security space mission to use a refurbished Falcon 9 booster.” The US Space Force “initially ordered an expendable rocket but agreed to the switch with a caveat: the reused booster had to be the one that flew another GPS 3 satellite to orbit last November.” Walter Lauderdale, deputy mission director of the Space and Missile Systems Center’s Launch Enterprise, “told reporters June 14 that this requirement is just for this mission as the military gets more comfortable with reusability.”
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Space News reports that a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster “failed to land after its most recent launch Feb. 15 because of ‘heat damage’ it sustained.” During the 47th Spaceport Summit on Tuesday, SpaceX senior adviser for build and flight reliability Hans Koenigsmann “said the failed landing during an otherwise successful launch of Starlink satellites remains under investigation.” On Friday, NASA International Space Station program manager Joel Montalbano “said the agency was in discussions with SpaceX about that investigation to see if it involved any issues that could affect the Crew-2 commercial crew launch scheduled for April 20.” Montalbano said, “As of today, we’re working with them to better understand what happened, and right now it’s just too early to say if we’re going to have any impacts” on the Crew-2 launch.
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