SpaceX crossed the 100-launch mark for 2026 on the night of August 18, when a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base carrying 24 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. The Starlink 17-50 mission was the 97th Falcon 9 flight of the year and the 100th SpaceX mission overall, marking the third consecutive year the company has hit triple digits.
Third straight century year
The launch window opened at 10 p.m. EDT (0200 GMT on August 19). SpaceX first cracked 100 launches in 2024 with 138 missions, then flew 170 in 2025. At the current 2026 pace — driven overwhelmingly by Starlink — the company is on track to challenge last year's record. Of SpaceX's launches this year, 73 have been Starlink builds, alongside a single Falcon Heavy mission and two suborbital Starship test flights.
Milestone booster B1097
The Falcon 9 first stage, Booster 1097, made its 12th flight and returned to a Pacific Ocean landing on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" roughly 8.5 minutes after liftoff. B1097 is one of SpaceX's headline reusable stages — it flew the Sentinel-6B ocean-observation satellite, Twilight and NROL-172 national-security payloads, and Transporter-17, and in April performed the 600th orbital-rocket landing in company history. The 24 Starlink satellites were slated to deploy about 61.5 minutes after launch.
Starlink build-out continues
The Starlink constellation is now approaching 11,000 operational satellites, a figure that keeps rising every week as SpaceX pairs Vandenberg Starlink flights with East Coast launches from Cape Canaveral. The August 18 launch follows the company's record 38-minute Falcon 9 double-header on August 15 for Globalstar and the U.S. Space Force.
What Starship changes
Executives have said Starship, the fully reusable heavy-lift vehicle now in suborbital testing, is meant to eventually replace Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy and drive annual launch cadence toward 1,000. For 2026, Falcon 9 remains the workhorse — and, as the milestone shows, an increasingly reliable one for both Starlink and commercial rideshare payloads.
Reporting based on Space.com, Spaceflight Now, NASASpaceflight and SpaceX communications.