Update Oct. 27, 9:50 p.m. EDT (0150 UTC): SpaceX confirms deployment of the 28 Starlink satellites.
Correction Oct. 29: Fixed error regarding the timing of the missions.
SpaceX continued its rapid pace of launches Monday with the flight of a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The Starlink 11-21 mission added another 28 more of the V2 Mini iteration of the satellites into low Earth orbit. The flight broke the record for the fastest pad turnaround for SpaceX’s West Coast launch pad, flying two days, 10 hours, 22 minutes and 59 seconds since the Starlink 11-12 mission on Saturday.
Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East happened at 5:43 p.m. PDT (8:43 p.m. EDT / 0043 UTC). This beat previous record of two days, 18 hours, 52 minutes and 20 seconds , set within the past week.
This comes after the company set another turnaround records over at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station earlier this month.
SpaceX used the Falcon 9 booster with the tail number B1082 to launch this mission. This was its 17th flight following USSF-62, NROL-145, OneWeb Launch 20 and 13 batches of Starlink satellites.
Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1082 targeted an autonomous landing on the drone ship ‘Of Course I Still Love You’. This was the 161st touch down on this vessel and the 525th booster landing to date. It was also the 98th missions supporting SpaceX’s Starlink constellation this year.
