SpaceX is slated to fly its final Starlink mission of the month with a Falcon 9 rocket launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Sunday morning.
The Starlink 17-40 mission will add another 24 broadband internet satellites to SpaceX’s low Earth orbit constellation. The company has more than 10,700 satellites currently in obit in order to statistics tracked by astronomer and orbital tracker, Jonathan McDowell.
Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East is scheduled at 9:09 a.m. PDT (12:09 p.m. EDT / 1609 UTC). The rocket will fly on a south-southwesterly trajectory upon leaving the pad.
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about 30 minutes prior to liftoff.
SpaceX will launch the Starlink 17-40 mission using the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1088. This will be its 17th flight following the launch of missions, like NASA’s SPHEREx, Transporter-12, and NROL-126.
A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1088 will target a landing on the drone ship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You’, positioned in the Pacific Ocean. If successful, this will be the 206th landing on this vessel and the 630th booster landing to date.
During the first half of 2026, following this launch, SpaceX will have launched its Falcon 9 rockets a total of 75 times. Of those 59 were in support of its Starlink constellation.
Here’s a breakdown of SpaceX’s Starlink launches per month versus its total for that month:
- January – 9/13
- February – 11/12
- March – 13/15
- April – 9/11
- May – 8/11
- June – 10/13 (following the Starlink 17-40 launch)
