SpaceX crossed the 100-orbital-mission mark for 2026 with an overnight Falcon 9 flight from Vandenberg Space Force Base's Space Launch Complex 4 East on August 21, 2026. It is the third year in a row that Elon Musk's company has hit triple-digit launches, and it did so almost four months earlier in the calendar than in 2025.
Starlink 15-20 adds 29 more broadband birds
The mission, Starlink 15-20, carried another 29 SpaceX broadband internet satellites into low Earth orbit, deploying about 61 minutes after liftoff. It rode Falcon 9 booster B1100 — on its ninth flight after prior missions including NROL-105 for the National Reconnaissance Office and seven earlier Starlink batches — with the first stage targeting the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean for what would be the 220th landing on that vessel and the 653rd SpaceX booster recovery.
Starlink still driving the cadence
Roughly 74 of SpaceX's 100 flights this year have been dedicated to expanding Starlink, which Musk confirmed exceeded 11,000 operational satellites earlier in the week. The remainder mixes Cape Canaveral Starlink batches, a Falcon Heavy flight and two Starship suborbital tests. SpaceX first passed 100 launches in a year in 2024 with 138 missions and followed with 170 in 2025, and Musk has said the goal is eventually to fly Starship multiple times a day.
A crowded launch week for the commercial-space industry
The milestone caps a busy week for orbital operators. Days earlier, China's LandSpace recovered a Zhuque-3 first-stage booster at Jiuquan, becoming the first commercial Chinese launcher to land an orbital-class rocket, while Rocket Lab flew its second Electron mission in eight days for Japan's iQPS. Even so, SpaceX's Vandenberg count alone in 2026 has now eclipsed most competitors' annual totals.
Reporting based on coverage from Spaceflight Now, Space.com and SpaceX.