There were two Starlink launches this week. The first was on May 4 at 19:01 UTC. Starlink L25 launched on Booster 1049 from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Booster 1049 was on its 9th flight, and successfully landed on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You. Both fairings were recovered.

And the second launch occurred five days later on May 9 at 06:42 UTC. Starlink L27 launched on the record tenth flight of Booster 1051 from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, also in Florida. It successfully landed on the drone ship Just Read The Instructions. Both fairings had previously flown on the GPS III SV4 mission and were successfully recovered.

This brings the total number of Starlink satellites launched into orbit to 1,625. Between the two of them, B1049 and B1051 have launched 720 Starlink satellites, almost half of the operational constellation and 260 tons of total mass inserted into orbit including the other missions the boosters launched.

SpaceX’s stated goal has been to use a first stage ten times without major refurbishment, and with the launch of Starlink L27, they have now achieved this. For those of you that are curious, Booster 1051 has quite the launch pedigree, having launched Bob and Doug to the ISS on the Demo-2 mission, plus two more commercial missions and six Starlink missions. [Ed. note: Booster 1051 launched the uncrewed Demo-1, not Demo-2.]

You may notice I said Starlink L25 and L27. L26 was skipped this time. Our team believes that it needed more integration time before its next launch. There are signs it will carry rideshare payloads where non-Starlink satellites get launched with Starlink satellites. This has happened before in 2020 with the Starlink L8, 9, and 10 launches. The rideshare payload for L26 appears to be a pair of Capella Space’s commercial Synthetic Aperture Radar satellites. These satellites weigh a considerable 112kg each — that’s 56 two-liter soda bottles — and will need to be inserted into a higher orbit. A higher orbit means more fuel will need to be burned and, because fuel has mass, it’s likely that L26 will carry fewer Starlinks than the usual 60 to make up the difference.

More Information

L25 discussion (Reddit)

L27 discussion (Reddit)

Capella info page (Gunter’s Space Page)

Launch video