SpaceX crossed the 100-mission mark for its Falcon rocket family in 2026 on August 22, when a Falcon 9 lifted 27 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 3:25 a.m. EDT (0725 GMT). Ninety-nine of those flights have been Falcon 9 missions; the sole Falcon Heavy launch of the year carried the Viasat-3 F3 telecom satellite back in April.
Booster B1100 lands for the ninth time
The Falcon 9 first stage - booster B1100, on its ninth flight - touched down on the droneship "Of Course I Still Love You" in the Pacific about 8.5 minutes after liftoff. The upper stage continued to low Earth orbit and deployed the 27 Starlink V2 Mini spacecraft on schedule just under 62 minutes into the mission. B1100 has now flown NROL-105 and seven Starlink batches.
Starlink pushes past 11,000 operational satellites
With today's deployment, Starlink's operational fleet tops 11,000 spacecraft, keeping it the largest satellite constellation ever flown. SpaceX has told regulators it wants to eventually operate up to 100,000 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites and a network of orbital data centers, both riding on the still-in-development Starship megarocket.
Chasing 2025's 165-launch record
The century mark before the end of August is well ahead of most years, but SpaceX still trails its own 2025 single-year record of 165 Falcon launches - all Falcon 9s - as it juggles Starlink deployment with a heavy commercial and national-security manifest. Starlink dominates the year's cadence: 76 of the 99 Falcon 9 flights so far in 2026 have been dedicated Starlink missions. Rideshare and government payloads round out the ledger, alongside recent milestones like the AST SpaceMobile BlueBird direct-to-cell launch.
Reporting based on coverage from Space.com and SpaceX.