SpaceX Notches 100th Orbital Mission of 2026 With Starlink Launch

VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif. — SpaceX has hit triple digits. The company launched its 100th orbital mission of 2026 in the early hours of Saturday, sending another batch of Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit aboard a Falcon 9 from Space Launch Complex 4 East.

Reaching 100 launches this early in the calendar is a striking marker of operational tempo. Ninety-nine of those flights were flown by the workhorse Falcon 9, with the lone exception a Falcon Heavy that lofted a telecom satellite in April. The pace keeps SpaceX comfortably ahead of the field even as it works toward the far larger Starship that will eventually take over the heavy lifting.

A cadence unlike any other

The milestone mission, Starlink 15-20, added 29 broadband satellites to a constellation that founder Elon Musk confirmed has now surpassed 11,000 operational spacecraft. Liftoff came at 12:25 a.m. local time, and the Falcon 9 traced a southeasterly path off the California coast before its upper stage released the satellites just over an hour later. Starlink remains the company's most frequent payload, accounting for roughly three-quarters of this year's Falcon 9 flights and driving the relentless launch rhythm that has made record booster reuse routine.

Reusability is the engine behind the numbers. On the 100th mission, the first stage, tail number B1100, flew for the ninth time before touching down on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific. It was the 220th landing on that vessel and, by SpaceX's count, the 653rd Falcon booster recovery to date, a tally that would have sounded like science fiction only a few years ago.

The Starship handoff ahead

Even as Falcon racks up milestones, SpaceX is openly planning its successor. Musk has said the company intends to wind down Falcon 9 once Starship is flying frequently enough to absorb the workload, a transition that will reshape how the company reaches orbit. SpaceX has said it ultimately wants to deploy 100,000 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites, a scale only Starship can realistically support given its far greater payload capacity.

For now, though, Falcon 9 is doing the heavy lifting and doing it at a rate no other launch provider approaches. Hitting 100 missions before the year's final third still leaves SpaceX chasing its own single-year record of 165 flights, set in 2025, but the trajectory is unmistakable. As chronicled by Spaceflight Now, the company is not merely maintaining its lead in orbital access; it is extending it.

Building the on-ramp to Starship

Each Starlink flight does double duty, expanding a global internet network while keeping the launch team sharp for the higher-cadence future Starship promises. The 100th mission of 2026 is a snapshot of a company operating at industrial scale in a business that used to measure success in a handful of launches per year. With Starship maturing and Falcon still humming, SpaceX's road to orbit has never looked busier, or more routine.