SpaceX lifted 27 more Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit early Wednesday from Vandenberg Space Force Base, the 76th Starlink flight of the year and the first mission after the company retired Falcon 9 Starlink launches from Florida.
Starlink 15-22 launch details
The Starlink 15-22 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East at 2:34 a.m. PDT (0934 UTC), flying a south-easterly trajectory. Falcon 9 booster B1082 made its 24th flight, having previously supported the NROL-145, USSF-62 and OneWeb Launch 20 missions along with 20 Starlink batches. About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1082 targeted a landing on the Pacific droneship Of Course I Still Love You, a touchdown that stood to become the vessel's 221st recovery and the 655th Falcon booster landing overall.
Florida Falcon 9 Starlink era ends
The Vandenberg launch came a day after SpaceX flew Starlink 10-49 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, a mission SpaceX Vice President of Launch Kiko Dontchev confirmed was the last planned Falcon 9 Starlink launch from Florida. "In the last seven years, Falcon has flown ~260 Starlink missions from the Cape," Dontchev wrote on X, adding that future Florida Starlink missions will pivot to Starship. That handover was already visible last week when the Starlink 10-49 mission set a booster reuse record with B1067's 37th flight, and the day before that when SpaceX flew its final Cape Canaveral Falcon 9 Starlink mission.
Constellation and cadence
The mission adds another 27 spacecraft to a constellation that crossed 11,000 satellites in low Earth orbit just over a week earlier and has now delivered more than 2,000 Starlink satellites in 2026 alone. SpaceX crossed its 100th orbital mission of 2026 on August 21, roughly two-thirds of the way through the year, underscoring how quickly Vandenberg is absorbing the west-coast Starlink workload.
What's next
Following the Florida Starlink retirement, SpaceX is expected to concentrate Falcon 9 Starlink cadence on the west coast while ramping Starship for Starlink v3 payloads. Dontchev said the Cape Canaveral team is "setting the foundation for what's next," a nod to Starship testing at LC-39A and Starbase after this year's back-to-back Ship 40 and Ship 41 flights.
Reporting based on coverage from Spaceflight Now and SpaceX communications.