Falcon 9 Booster B1100 Aims for Fourth Successful Landing

As first reported by Spaceflight Now, SpaceX is preparing to launch another batch of Starlink satellites Friday afternoon from California, with liftoff scheduled for 2:48 p.m. PDT from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base.

According to Spaceflight Now's mission preview, the flight is designated Starlink 17-15 and is carrying 25 Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites to low Earth orbit. The outlet reported that this will be SpaceX's 30th Starlink mission of 2026, a pace that underscores how industrialized Falcon 9 operations have become.

Spaceflight Now also reported that the mission will use Falcon 9 booster B1100 on its fourth flight, after previously supporting NROL-105 and two earlier Starlink missions. According to the same report, the booster is expected to attempt recovery on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific a little more than eight minutes after liftoff.

If that landing succeeds, Spaceflight Now said it would be the 185th landing on that vessel and SpaceX's 589th booster landing overall.

Those numbers matter more than they look. Starlink flights used to be treated as incremental constellation maintenance. At this cadence, they are better understood as recurring infrastructure deployments: routine launch, repeat booster use, predictable recovery, then another stack to orbit.

The technical pattern is now familiar. Falcon 9 lifts off from Vandenberg on a southerly trajectory, stages in the first few minutes, and recovers the booster downrange while the upper stage continues to insert satellites into low Earth orbit. The novelty is gone; the execution tempo is the story.

According to Spaceflight Now, the payload on this mission consists of V2 Mini Optimized satellites, part of SpaceX's ongoing effort to add capacity and performance while Starship remains in development for eventually larger Starlink payload blocks.

That creates an operational bridge strategy: keep squeezing more capability out of Falcon 9 and mini-class satellites while preserving network growth and service quality. It is not as headline-grabbing as a new vehicle debut, but it is what keeps the business running.

There is also a regional systems angle here. Vandenberg has become central to SpaceX's polar and high-inclination Starlink deployment rhythm, while Florida pads carry their own heavy manifest mix. The company's ability to run parallel launch lines from both coasts is one of the clearest competitive advantages in commercial launch right now.

Analysis: this mission is another reminder that SpaceX's edge is not a single breakthrough but manufacturing cadence in launch operations. Reflight discipline, pad turnaround, and recovery reliability are compounding advantages. Every successful "routine" Starlink mission strengthens that flywheel.

The counterpoint is equally real: high tempo leaves less slack for anomalies. A scrub, recovery miss, or upper-stage issue can ripple quickly through a dense manifest. But so far, according to Spaceflight Now's tracking and mission figures, SpaceX continues to absorb that complexity without losing deployment momentum.

For readers watching the economics of space infrastructure, this is the takeaway: Starlink growth is now coupled to a launch architecture that behaves more like an industrial pipeline than a traditional program-by-program space campaign. Friday's mission is one more data point, but the trend line is the real story.