SpaceX launches another 27 Starlink satellites
SpaceX today successfully launched another 27 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its 18th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
61 SpaceX
30 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 61 to 49.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
SpaceX today successfully launched another 27 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its 18th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
61 SpaceX
30 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 61 to 49.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
According to SpaceFlightNow, this mission also had the distinction of being the SpaceX’s 450th successful booster landing.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2025/05/23/live-coverage-spacex-to-launch-west-coast-falcon-9-with-starlink-satellites/
The real achievement for SpaceX is that, like the Dragon flights you talked about yesterday, this is now such a ho-hum achievement that little of the news treatment of this mission even mentions this milestone.
Yeah. Ho hum, another SpaceX Falcon launch with Starlinks aboard. Must be a day with a name ending in ‘y.’ I suspect the corporate space press will likely also fail to mention SpaceX’s 500th successful F9 booster landing when it occurs – if current cadence continues – in 90 days or so. Or the one thousandth when that happens in early 2028. And once Starship hits its stride, of course, there will be even more such milestones to ignore and at more frequent intervals. Oh well, the NYT doesn’t report train arrivals and departures at Penn Station or flights to and from JFK either. Unremarked routine is just one of the indicia of success. The more that space stories become dog-bites-man affairs, the better.