Follow-Up: Falcon 9 Lifts Off from Vandenberg with 27 Starlink Satellites, First Stage Recovered at Sea
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, California, Monday, Oct. 12 — A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 5:28 p.m. PT today from Space Launch Complex 4-East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, carrying 27 Starlink V2 Mini satellites toward low-Earth orbit on the Starlink 15-25 mission, according to SpaceX's mission webcast and Spaceflight Now. It was the first West Coast Starlink launch since Sept. 19 and Vandenberg's 69th rocket launch of 2026.
The first-stage booster, B1088, flew for the 20th time, having previously supported the NROL-126, Transporter-12, SPHEREx/PUNCH, NROL-57 and USSF-366 missions plus 14 Starlink flights. About eight and a half minutes after liftoff, the booster landed successfully on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean, to be recovered and flown again. The rocket flew southeast along the California coast toward an orbit about 266 kilometers high, inclined 70 degrees to the equator.
Under the mission timeline, the 27 satellites were to be deployed a little more than an hour after liftoff. As of publication, GSM had not seen a SpaceX confirmation that deployment was complete, and this report draws no conclusion on the deployment outcome; a further follow-up will be published when confirmation is available. Before the launch, SpaceX had advised that residents of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties might hear sonic booms as the booster returned. The rocket lifted off on schedule within the day's 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. PT window.
Sources: SpaceX mission webcast and Spaceflight Now launch coverage, Oct. 12, 2026; rewritten by GSM. This is a follow-up to GSM's afternoon technology report on the Vandenberg launch window.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图片 Image: U.S. Space Force photo by 2nd Lt. Andrew Taller, Starlink 17-27 Mission Launches from SLC-4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base (file photo), Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
