In a quiet week for rocket launches worldwide, SpaceX has launched the 500th orbital flight of a Falcon 9 during its first of two launches this week. Outside of the U.S., Gilmour Space is expected to attempt to launch the first flight of its Eris launch vehicle from Australia, while China is preparing to launch its next cargo resupply mission to the Tiangong space station.
As many as 10 orbital launches have typically taken place from sites across the world in recent weeks. Of these, the Starlink Group 15-7 mission was the last orbital launch to take flight during the first half of 2025, and marked the 500th launch of a Falcon 9, when including 2020’s suborbital Crew Dragon in-flight abort test. It also set a new milestone when booster B1067 became the first in the fleet to fly 29 times.
The company set new records in the last days of June with back-to-back launches from Florida and California of the Starlink Group 10-34 and Group 15-7 missions.
These were SpaceX’s 80th and 81st Falcon missions of the year and set a new pad turnaround record of 56 hours, 31 minutes, and 10 seconds at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) in the process. Three launches had taken place from the pad in less than five days. On the west coast, SpaceX also achieved a new five-day record in Vandenberg, turning booster B1088 around from its arrival via barge to its subsequent launch, on the second of these two missions.
The first half of the year drew to a close with 142 orbital launches worldwide, lofting over 2,130 payloads and 15 humans into orbit. This cadence represents a 16% increase on 2024’s midway count of 122 orbital launches.
Starlink satellites are released during Starlink Group 15-5 – the 125th mission from Pad 4E (Credit: SpaceX)
Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 10-28
As noted above, this mission marked the 500th orbital launch of a Falcon 9, the first of which flew just over 15 years ago on June 4, 2010, from the same pad. Launch took place on Tuesday, July 8, at 4:21 AM EDT (08:21 UTC), which was over halfway through the typical four-hour window, from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Onboard was a batch of 28 Starlink v2-Mini high-speed internet communications satellites headed into low-Earth orbit at an altitude of 279 km, inclined 53.16 degrees. This was the 19th mission into this shell, which saw its first launch just over a year ago, the vast majority of which have launched from this pad.
Four recent missions building the Group 10 shell have carried 27 satellites. The Starlink Group 10-18 mission was the last time a batch of 28 satellites was lofted, launching from this same pad on June 18.
Booster B1077 supported this mission on its 22nd flight, landing approximately eight minutes into the mission on the deck of the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas, for what was SpaceX’s 490th recovery attempt. The booster has been active since it first lofted Crew-5 into orbit in early October 2022. Since then, it has returned to the International Space Station carrying the CRS-28 and NG-20 and also launched Optus-X, Galaxy 37, Inmarsat I-6 F2, GPS III SV06, and numerous Starlink missions.
A Falcon 9 launched from SLC-40 on Sunday, July 13 at 1:04 AM EDT (05:04 UTC). The mission carried the Israeli Dror 1 communications satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit. With a launch mass of around 4,000 kg, the satellite was constructed on the Israel Aerospace Industries AMOS-HP bus with an approximate 14-year lifespan. Dror-1 is said to include an advanced digital communication payload and “smartphone in space” capabilities, to provide communication agility throughout the satellite’s lifetime in space. Intelsat is understood to be providing launch and early orbit phase (LEOP) services for the craft.
Booster B1083 supported this mission and successfully landed on the droneship Just Read The Instructions downrange in the Atlantic Ocean. This was the 13th flight for the booster, which began its career lofting Crew 8 to the International Space Station, and went on to support missions including Polaris Dawn, CRS-31, and Nova C IM-2, carrying the second Intuitive Machines lunar lander Athena.
(Lead image: Falcon 9 launches from Florida. Credit: Julia Bergeron for NSF)
