SpaceX launches 1st of 5 missions on tap in next 8 days on Florida's Space Coast

Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel on Dec 11, 2025

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ORLANDO, Fla. — SpaceX and United Launch Alliance are combining for a busy week of rocket launches on the Space Coast.

First up Thursday evening was SpaceX’s planned Starlink 6-90 mission with 29 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 5:01 p.m. Eastern time.

This was the 16th flight of the first-stage booster, which made a recovery landing downrange on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas stationed in the Atlantic.

The launch sets a turnaround record between launches at SLC-40, coming 2 days, 2 hours, 44 min since the Dec. 9 NROL-77 mission.

The rocket pads will be quiet for a few days, but get busier Sunday night through early Friday, Dec. 19, with four more potential launches, including three that could fly within 15 hours from Sunday-Monday.

SpaceX plans to be back on SLC-40 for the Starlink 6-82 mission with another 29 Starlink satellites targeting liftoff during a launch window that runs from 9:43 p.m.-1:43 a.m. Dec. 15. This will be the ninth flight of the first-stage booster, which will aim for a recovery landing downrange on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas stationed in the Atlantic.

Then ULA plans to get in on the launch action early Monday with an Atlas V on the Amazon Leo 4 mission (formerly Project Kuiper) targeting a launch window that opens at 3:52 a.m.

The Atlas V will be in a 551 configuration launching 27 satellites in Amazon’s seventh overall operational launch (and fourth with ULA). This would increase the constellation to 180 of the planned 3,236 total needed to be in orbit by July 2029.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has already sent up more than 3,000 Starlinks just this year, and more than 10,000 since the company’s first operational launch in 2019, including more than 9,000 that remain on orbit.

And that number will continue to grow, including later Monday morning.

That’s because SpaceX plans to be back with a Falcon 9 launch from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-A on the Starlink 6-99 mission with 29 Starlink satellites. It’s targeting liftoff during launch window that runs from 8:11 a.m.-12:11 p.m. This will be the 6th flight of the first-stage booster, which will aim for a recovery landing downrange on the droneship Just Read the Instructions stationed in the Atlantic.

Finally, SpaceX has lined up for midnight Friday, Dec. 19 a Falcon 9 on the Starlink 6-88 mission with 29 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40. Its launch window runs from 12:00-3:17 a.m. This will be the first flight of the first-stage booster, which will aim for a recovery landing downrange on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas stationed in the Atlantic.

With Thursday’s launch, SpaceX, ULA and Blue Origin have so far combined to launch 106 orbital missions from either Cape Canaveral SFS or KSC this year. The previous record of 93 was surpassed in early November.

SpaceX has flown all by seven of the missions with ULA having tackled five and Blue Origin two.

All three companies combined to set another Space Coast record last month with four launches within 34 hours from four launch pads.

That happened with Blue Origin’s NG-2 mission from Canaveral’s Launch Complex 36 and ULA’s ViaSat-3 F2 mission flying from Canaveral’s SLC-41 launched within six hours of one another on Nov. 13 followed by SpaceX flying a pair of Starlink missions from Canaveral’s SLC-40 and KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A on Nov. 14 and early Nov. 15.

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