SpaceX launches record-breaking Falcon 9 flight

By Dave Mason
The Center Square

SpaceX broke its record Wednesday morning for its number of Falcon 9 launches in a single year.

This year’s 133rd Falcon launch took off, with no problems and a minimum of fanfare, at 7:16 a.m. PDT from Vandenberg Space Force Base in northern Santa Barbara County. Except for a few clouds, skies were clear at the Southern California site just off the Pacific Ocean.

It was a routine launch. Mission control announcers during a spacex.com broadcast, which didn’t have any studio anchors, spoke calmly during the mission deploying 28 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit.

“Go, Space X. Go, Falcon. Go, Starlink,” one announcer said calmly with slight inflection as the Falcon 9 was launched from Vandenberg.

Interest remains high in the launches. More than 45,000 viewers watched the live spacex.com broadcast of the launch. As usual, it featured views from the cameras on the Falcon 9’s two stages as the rocket soared.

“Never gets old!” one viewer posted on SpaceX’s page on X.

The first and second stages separated at 2 minutes, 28 seconds, according to SpaceX.

And the first stage, the reusable portion, landed at 8 minutes, 22 seconds in the Pacific Ocean – right on its target on SpaceX’s drone ship called Of Course I Still Love You. The camera on the rocket showed the drone ship below it as it touched down, upright on the ship. The landing was also shown from the point of view of a camera on Of Course I Still Love You.

SpaceX said this was the 21st flight for this particular first-stage booster.

The mission’s Starlink satellites, which bring low-cost internet to remote areas, were deployed one hour after launch, Space X said.

The company noted it was possible residents in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties heard one or more sonic booms during the launch.