SpaceX
SpaceX plans Falcon 9 satellite launch from Pad 39A prior to Crew Dragon, Falcon Heavy
SpaceX plans to launch one final commercial Falcon 9 mission from Pad 39A before much of the historic facility’s availability is taken over Crew Dragon and Falcon Heavy launch needs, perhaps as soon as December 2018.
The reason for the decision to launch a routine Falcon 9 mission from 39A – while Launch Complex-40 (LC-40) is (presumably) perfectly available – is unknown, but it can likely be pinned down to launch schedule assurance and pad shakedowns ahead of the flight debut of Crew Dragon, NET January 2019.
SpaceX Falcon 9 launch with Es’hail-2 has turned up on the Eastern Range as NET November 14. This launch will take place from 39A. Cool photo from Nathan Barker (@NASA_Nerd) from this week below:
Range shows this is an ASDS landing for the booster.
As always, subject to change. pic.twitter.com/yydKuOVXrP
— NSF – NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) October 17, 2018
Dragons’ rule
Ultimately, the decision to move the launch of commercial communications satellite Es’Hail-2 to Pad 39A likely boils down to a desire to preserve the delay-sensitive CRS-16 Cargo Dragon launch (NET November 27) while also acting as a sort of ad-hoc shakedown for the pad. 39A has undergone a large number of Crew Dragon-related modifications – some visible but most not – and will have been dormant (at least launch-wise) since Falcon 9 Block 5’s debut six months prior.
Whether or not it’s truly needed, another Falcon 9 launch from the pad will presumably allow SpaceX to work out any new kinks in 39A’s updated ground support infrastructure and perhaps refamiliarize the company’s East Coast launch crew after half a year focused on LC-40 operations. Es’Hail-2 is a ~3000 kg (~6600 lb) geostationary communications satellite to be operated by Qatari company Es’hailSat once it arrives at its final operational orbit.
Despite a recent presentation from SpaceX VP of Reliability Hans Koenigsmann stating that Falcon 9 is capable of returning to launch site (RTLS; i.e. a Landing Zone recovery) while still placing 3500 kg into a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), SpaceX has filed this launch as an ASDS (autonomous spaceport drone ship) recovery, meaning that it will land aboard Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) shortly after launch. Delayed from August 2018, SpaceX may be trying to partially make up for that slip by placing Es’Hail-2 sat in as high of a transfer orbit as possible, potentially cutting weeks or even months off of the time required for the satellite to climb uphill to its operational orbit.
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- A welcome update to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Heavy performance with and without booster recovery. (SpaceX)
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- SpaceX’s most recent Florida launch was in early September. (Tom Cross)
An East Coast lull
Unusual for SpaceX in an otherwise meteoric year filled with numerous major ‘firsts’ and the company’s most productive launch cadence yet, there will be a two-month lull in launches from the East Coast between Telstar 18V (September 10) and Es’Hail-2 (NET November 14), interrupted only by the spectacular October 7 launch of SAOCOM 1A in California. Barring any additional issues, SpaceX will likely crest its 2017 launch record (18 missions) by 3 or 4 missions, not quite the 25-30 launches much of the company’s leadership was probably hoping for, but still an extremely impressive number.
Despite the fact that launch delays are never pleasant (much like if Christmas were pushed back weeks or months to wait for sleigh and present availability), the willingness to significantly delay launches or fall short of targets (assuming payload availability has not been the long pole) is actually a very good thing. Within reason, inconvenient delays tend to serve as evidence that SpaceX is not succumbing to quite the same level of “Go fever” and manager/engineer/technician disconnection that has arguably been responsible for a huge number of launch failures, particularly for NASA’s Space Shuttle.
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- SpaceX has already launched 17 successful missions in 2018, one shy of 2017’s record.
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- Plenty of landings, too…
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- The second Block 5 booster, B1047, debuted at LC-40 on July 21. (Tom Cross)
Best described as the point at which non-technical pressures to launch (cost-saving, internal and external politics, general face-saving) far outweigh the voices of the engineers and technicians responsible for reliably designing, building, and launching rockets, “Go fever” is demonstrably one of the worst things that can occur in spaceflight-oriented organizations, where the consequences of even the tiniest failures can often be amplified into total mission and vehicle failures and even the death of employees or astronauts. It may be unpleasant as an unaffiliated follower or fan and is likely far less pleasant still as an employee or manager, but it is undeniably preferable to succeed after weeks or months of delays than to fail catastrophically while staying on schedule.
Speaking of schedules, Es’Hail-2 (39A) is NET Nov. 14, followed by SSO-A (SLC-4E, Vandenberg) NET Nov. 19 and SpaceX’s 16th operational ISS resupply mission – CRS-16 – on Nov. 27th from Pad 40. Heading into the last month of 2018, SpaceX will launch the first of a fleet of new GPS III satellites for the USAF (NET Dec. 15) and finish off the year with a Vandenberg buzzer-beater, the eighth and final Iridium NEXT launch, NET Dec. 30.
For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet check out our brand new LaunchPad and LandingZone newsletters!
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced today that the company will likely attempt to catch the Starship upper stage with its launch tower arms “in a few months.”
In a post on X, Musk wrote, “Looks like we will probably catch the ship with the tower in a few months. If there had been a tower out to sea where we practiced landing the ship, it would have been caught.” He added that the first reflight of a Starship vehicle is expected by the end of 2026 or early 2027, describing it as “a fork in the road of history for consciousness reaching the stars.”
Looks like we will probably catch the ship with the tower in a few months. If there had been a tower out to sea where we practiced landing the ship, it would have been caught.
First reflight of the ship will be either end of this year or early next. That will be a fork in the… https://t.co/O5g9pqrzyo
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 20, 2026
Musk’s prediction comes amid ongoing progress toward full reusability of the Starship system, a two-stage rocket designed for rapid turnaround and dramatically lower launch costs. Catching the upper stage, known simply as “ship,” with the Mechazilla tower’s mechanical arms would mark a major milestone. It would allow both stages to return directly to the launch site for quick refurbishment and reuse, eliminating the need for ocean recovery.
Musk has previously signaled plans for a ship catch. In July, shortly after SpaceX’s wildly successful Starship 13 mission, he stated that the company would attempt to catch the ship with the tower on the next flight unless problems emerged in the mission data review. Earlier comments also outline conditions such as successful soft ocean landings before attempting a land recovery to minimize risk.
SpaceX has solved Starship’s biggest challenge, Elon Musk says
The latest update from Musk adjusts this timeline to a few months, reflecting the iterative nature of the test campaign.
SpaceX has already demonstrated the tower catch technique successfully with the Super Heavy booster on a couple of occasions. The first successful booster catch occurred during Flight 5 in October 2024, when the massive first stage returned to the Starbase pad in Texas and was plucked from the air by the tower arms.
Additional catches followed on later flights, including Flight 7, proving the concept for the booster and building confidence in the system as a whole.
Achieving a similar catch for the upper stage would represent a significant step forward. The ship returns from much higher speeds and greater heat loads after orbital or near-orbital flight. Success would advance SpaceX’s goal of full and rapid reusability, potentially reducing the cost of access to orbit by a factor of 100 or more and supporting ambitions for frequent satellite deployments, lunar missions, and eventual Mars flights.
Musk has long emphasized that true reusability, refueling rather than discarding hardware, is essential for making humanity a multi-planetary species.
As SpaceX continues refining Starship through successive test flights, the coming months will test whether the ambitious catch timeline can be met. The combination of prior booster successes and improving ship landing precision suggests the company is steadily closing in on this historic capability.
SpaceX has achieved an incredible milestone by launching its 11,000th Starlink satellite into orbit.
This accomplishment occurred during the Starlink Group 17-50 mission, which lifted off on August 19 at 04:01 UTC from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Falcon 9 launches 24 @Starlink satellites from California pic.twitter.com/UscpmAxDls
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 19, 2026
A Falcon 9 rocket carried 24 Starlink V2 Mini satellites on this flight, successfully deploying them into low Earth orbit approximately one hour after liftoff. The first stage booster, identified as B1097 on its twelfth flight, landed successfully on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean.
According to tracking data compiled around that date, this deployment brought the total number of Starlink satellites in orbit to just over 11,000.
The Starlink program began with test satellites known as Tintin A and B, launched on February 22, 2018. The first operational batch of 60 Starlink satellites followed on May 24, 2019, when a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral. Those initial satellites marked the start of a rapid expansion that has continued for more than seven years.
SpaceX has conducted hundreds of dedicated Starlink missions since then, routinely launching batches of 20 to 30 satellites at a time using reusable Falcon 9 rockets. By mid-2026, the company had already surpassed 12,000 total satellites launched across all versions, with continuous replacements for units that deorbit as designed to manage space debris.
Looking ahead, SpaceX continues to expand the Starlink constellation to enhance global broadband coverage, capacity, and speed. The network already serves millions of users across more than 160 countries and supports applications ranging from residential internet to maritime, aviation, and emergency services.
Future plans center on next-generation hardware, including larger V3 satellites capable of delivering substantially higher throughput, which require the increased payload capacity of the Starship vehicle currently under development and testing.
In July, SpaceX submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission seeking authority for a Gen3 constellation of up to 100,000 satellites. These spacecraft would operate in very low Earth orbit shells at altitudes near 325 kilometers and 475 kilometers. The filing requests use of existing Ku, Ka, V, and E band spectrum along with new greenfield W and D band frequencies between 92 and 275 GHz.
SpaceX states that the expanded system aims to deliver multi-gigabit symmetrical broadband to consumers, enterprises, governments, and billions of AI-powered devices worldwide while handling a majority of global internet traffic. Approval and subsequent deployment would depend on regulatory review and the operational readiness of Starship for high-volume launches.
This ambitious scale reflects SpaceX’s ongoing commitment to providing ubiquitous high-speed connectivity from space.
News
SpaceX just launched a secret payload from California
SpaceX launched a classified Space Force mission from Vandenberg, revealing almost nothing about its payload.
SpaceX launched a classified Falcon 9 mission for the U.S. Space Force from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Saturday night, and the government released almost nothing about what was on board. The mission, designated USSF-366, lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E with a window that opened at 9:52 p.m. ET and ran into the early hours of Sunday, according to SpaceX’s own mission page, which described the payload only as classified. SpaceX confirmed the launch on its X account and pointed viewers to a livestream that began roughly ten minutes before liftoff.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-366 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/FFEzeYOds1
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 16, 2026
The lack of detail did not stop analysts from filling in the blanks. Independent tracking of the rocket’s stage drop zones matched the pattern SpaceX has used on previous Starlink Group 15 missions, according to reporting from Outer Space Today, which pointed to Starshield as the likely payload rather than a one off government satellite. Starshield is SpaceX’s national security product, a version of the Starlink satellite bus built to Pentagon specifications for earth observation, communications and hosted payloads. Unlike consumer Starlink, government agencies do not have to disclose what Starshield satellites are actually doing once they reach orbit.
USSF-366 is the latest entry in a steady flow of classified and semi classified work between SpaceX and the Space Force. The company picked up a $178.5 million task order in April to launch missile tracking satellites for the Space Development Agency, as Teslarati reported at the time, and followed that in July with a $1.6 billion award covering 18 more Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027, also detailed by Teslarati. Add those contracts up and SpaceX’s Pentagon business for 2026 alone tops $8 billion.
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
The Falcon 9 that flew Saturday landed back near the launch site, producing the sonic booms that have become routine for residents near Vandenberg. What is less routine is how little the public will likely ever learn about what the rocket carried. SpaceX and the Space Force have not confirmed the Starshield connection, and government satellite programs built on commercial buses rarely get identified beyond a mission number and a general orbit. For a company that live streams almost everything else it does, from Starship test flights to Optimus robot demos, USSF-366 is a reminder that some of SpaceX’s busiest work now happens entirely out of public view.
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