SpaceX cleared a rare double milestone on September 13, 2026, launching the final three O3b mPOWER satellites for Luxembourg-based operator SES and, in the process, ticking over to the 700th flight of the Falcon rocket family. The Falcon 9 lifted off at 2:49 p.m. EDT (1849 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Booster B1080's 29th trip finishes SES's decade-long build
The launch was flown by first-stage booster B1080, notching its 29th mission before touching down on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic Ocean about eight and a half minutes after liftoff. It was the 166th recovery on that vessel and the 661st Falcon booster landing to date. Across 700 Falcon flights, the family now stands at 687 Falcon 9 missions and 13 Falcon Heavy launches.
Boeing-built birds close a 13-satellite MEO fleet
Three O3b mPOWER spacecraft, designated F11, F12 and F13, separated from the upper stage roughly 34 minutes into the mission, staggered in seven-minute intervals. Each spacecraft has a dry mass of about 1,900 kilograms and is based on Boeing's 702X software-defined bus, allowing SES to reshape thousands of steerable beams in orbit as customer demand shifts.
The three satellites round out a 13-satellite constellation that SES first began deploying in December 2022. Subsequent Falcon 9 flights in April 2023, November 2023, December 2024 and July 2025 chipped away at the manifest until this month's launch closed it out. SES plans to commission the last spacecraft and begin full commercial service in mid-2027.
MEO broadband targets enterprise, cellular and cruise
O3b mPOWER is SES's second-generation medium Earth orbit fleet, delivering multi-terabit low-latency broadband for cellular backhaul, cruise lines, enterprise, government and IP trunking. SES has already migrated large tranches of legacy O3b traffic to the mPOWER network, and it is one of the operator's key competitive answers to SpaceX's own Starlink and Eutelsat-OneWeb LEO systems.
SpaceX pushes deeper into government and commercial launch
Falcon has now hit 700 missions barely six years after crossing 100, driven mostly by Starlink and, increasingly, National Security Space Launch flights. In parallel, SpaceX is preparing Starship's first orbital deployment attempt on Flight 14, and separately just closed its 100th Falcon mission of 2026 last month with a Vandenberg Starlink flight.
Reporting based on coverage from Spaceflight Now, SES and SpaceX.