SpaceX launches two Starlink missions in under five hours

SpaceX has regained its stride after a failure earlier this month.

The company launched two missions on Sunday morning (July 28), lofting batches of its Starlink internet satellites from both coasts atop Falcon 9 rockets less than five hours apart.

The two liftoffs came about 24 hours after a Saturday morning (July 27) Falcon 9 launch, which was the vehicle’s return-to-flight mission after a July 11 failure.

Sunday’s first launch occurred at 1:09 a.m. EDT (0509), when a Falcon 9 topped with 23 Starlink satellites lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It was the 14th mission for this Falcon 9 first stage and the 300th reflight of a SpaceX booster overall, the company wrote in an X post on Sunday morning.

Then, at 5:22 a.m. EDT (0922 GMT; 1:22 a.m. local California time), the company sent a Falcon 9 up from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base. This rocket carried 21 Starlink satellites, 13 of which can beam service directly to cell phones.

Both missions were fully successful, according to SpaceX. The rockets’ first stages aced their landings on ships at sea, and their upper stages deployed the Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit as planned. Space