Starlink Expansion SpaceX’s 100th Falcon 9 Launch of 2025 Adds 24 Satellites
Booster 1088 delivers another batch of Starlink V2 Minis, marking SpaceX’s 103rd mission this year.
Trenton, August 18 EST: SpaceX has made triple-digit launches in a single year sound like business as usual. On Tuesday morning, a Falcon 9 rocket rose from Vandenberg Space Force Base carrying another batch of Starlink satellites, marking the company’s 100th Falcon 9 flight of 2025.
Rockets That Behave Like Delivery Trucks
The rocket in question, Booster 1088, wasn’t doing anything flashy. It was on its ninth trip to orbit, hauling 24 Starlink V2 Minis into low Earth orbit. Less than ten minutes later, it was already back on Earth, landing neatly on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific.
Not long ago, re-flying rockets was the kind of thing you saw in concept art. Now it’s so normal that most people don’t notice. SpaceX has pulled this off nearly 500 times, treating its fleet like a set of reusable delivery vans. The metaphor may sound unglamorous, but that’s the point rockets aren’t rare jewels anymore, they’re workhorses.
Orbit Is Getting Crowded
The satellite side of the story is just as big. Tuesday’s launch pushes the active Starlink fleet above 8,100 satellites, out of more than 9,400 launched since the first batch in 2018. That’s more satellites than existed, period, in the entire world just 15 years ago.
This year alone, 72 Falcon 9 flights have been devoted exclusively to Starlink, planting nearly 1,800 new satellites in orbit. It’s a pace no other company is close to matching. Amazon’s Project Kuiper hasn’t even started customer service yet, and OneWeb is playing catch-up with a fraction of the hardware.
But packing thousands of satellites into the same orbital lanes is starting to feel like rush-hour traffic with no stoplights. Astronomers complain of bright streaks across their telescope images. Space junk experts warn about the risk of chain-reaction collisions. Regulators are scrambling to catch up. SpaceX says its satellites will burn up cleanly when retired, but skepticism lingers.
When Rockets Stop Being Special
What stands out here isn’t just the volume it’s the tempo. SpaceX is now averaging about three launches a week. Back in the Space Shuttle era, a handful of flights in a year was considered a strong showing. Now a single company is scaling like it’s running an airline, not a space program.
It’s a stark contrast to competitors. United Launch Alliance usually flies a dozen times per year, if that. Even China’s Long March rockets, which enjoy the backing of a national government, aren’t keeping up with SpaceX’s conveyor-belt approach.
The Falcon 9 isn’t a spectacle anymore it’s infrastructure. Like the first reliable passenger planes, it has crossed the line from marvel to mundane. That’s both the achievement and the controversy.
Starlink Is the Endgame
The machine behind all this is Starlink, SpaceX’s attempt to build a global internet service from orbit. Musk has hinted at needing tens of thousands of satellites before the system is truly worldwide. The upside coverage in places traditional broadband won’t touch. The downside giving one company outsized control over a critical layer of global connectivity.
It’s a gamble with enormous stakes. If it works, Starlink could be as disruptive to telecom as the iPhone was to personal computing. If it backfires whether through regulation, collisions, or public pushback SpaceX risks flooding orbit for nothing.
What’s Next
So far, the company shows no signs of slowing. With 103 total missions in 2025 including a few Starship suborbital tests SpaceX is on track to clear 120 launches by year’s end. Starship may eventually shoulder the bigger loads, but right now Falcon 9 is the quiet workhorse changing what “normal” looks like in spaceflight.
And maybe that’s the biggest shift of all when rockets stop being spectacular, the world has already changed.
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Trained in war zones, raised in Newark, and seasoned in city hall, Jordan blends grit reporting with deep integrity. From floods to finance bills, they’re always first on scene and last to leave.
