Update Aug. 14, 10:30 a.m. EDT: SpaceX confirms deployment of the Starlink satellites.
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket with a batch of 28 of its Starlink V2 Mini satellites into low Earth orbit during a mid-morning Thursday flight from Florida’s Space Coast.
Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket on the Starlink 10-20 mission from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station happened at 8:29 a.m. EDT (1229 UTC). This was the 69th orbital launch from Florida so far this year.
The 45th Weather Squadron forecast a 90 percent chance of favorable weather conditions for liftoff. Meteorologists said on Wednesday that they only had slight concerns with interference from “any sneaky cumulus that pushes onshore.”
“Overnight/early morning winds are expected to maintain a more southwesterly flow for both primary and backup launch windows, which should help limit any cumulus clouds from tracking onshore from activity that develops over the Atlantic,” launch weather officers wrote.
SpaceX used the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1085 to launch this mission on its 10th flight. Its previous missions included NASA’s Crew-9, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 and Fram2.
About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1085 landed on the droneship ‘Just Read the Instructions,’ completing the 132nd landing on this vessel and the 488th booster landing to date.
With the addition of these latest 28 Starlink satellites, SpaceX has launched a total of 1,762 Starlink satellites over the course of 71 Falcon 9 flights in 2025. The vast majority of those missions, 40 so far, launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Later in the day on Thursday, the California Coastal Commission will discuss a proposal being argued by the U.S. Space Force on behalf of SpaceX that the company should be allowed to increase its number of Falcon 9 launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base from 50 to 95.
SpaceX is also seeing to transform Space Launch Complex 6 at VSFB to allow for both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches as well as to add a pair of landing pads at that site.
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