Launching last night at 12:03 am PT (08:03 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Base in California, a Falcon 9 delivered one other batch of twenty-two Starlink satellites into orbit.
This mission marked the 91st orbital launch of the yr for the corporate. 22 Starlink satellites were inserted right into a 53-degree orbital inclination and separated from the 2nd stage just over an hour after lift-off.
![](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/GA0L9DsaEAAQbwN-1-scaled.jpg)
The midnight launch of the Starlink Group 7-8 mission (Credit SpaceX)
Now here is where I might normally place the lift-off clip from X, but during last night’s launch, the stream didn’t work through the launch and only picked up the mission some 20 seconds into flight with bad buffering and, as of now, continues to be having issues on X to replay the mission.
So here’s a quick recap, the rocket launched on time, passed through maximum dynamic pressure (Max Q), and accomplished stage separation, at which point the Falcon 9 first stage began its journey back, and the 2nd stage continued into orbit.
As for the primary stage, it was Booster 1071 that delivered the Starlinks into orbit. It accomplished its thirteenth trip after previously launching 6 Starlink missions, 2 top secret spy satellites, 2 Transporter missions, 1 science mission for CNES, NASA, and CSA, and the SARah-1 mission.
Falcon 9’s first stage has landed on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship pic.twitter.com/eN5gAeEDq0
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) December 8, 2023
B1071 made one other successful landing on the droneship “Of Course I Still Love You” eight and a half minutes after launch. The booster had a 27-day turnaround since its last mission, a bit quicker than average due to that mission landing at landing zone 4 as a substitute of a droneship. The launch site had a turnaround time of just ~6.5 and half days, making it certainly one of the fastest, if not the fastest time between launches for SpaceX from Vandenberg. Shortening that point a bit further will enable them to extend their launch cadence next yr.
Next up is the Falcon Heavy OTV-7 (X-37B spaceplane) mission, which SpaceX has yet to substantiate, but Space Systems Command public affairs in a press release showed a launch time at 8:14 pm ET (01:14 UTC) with a 10-minute launch window on December tenth.