SpaceX launch makes it 60 for the Space Coast, this time with record booster flight

Another Space Coast night launch Friday marked the 60th liftoff from the Space Coast for the year, this time with a booster flying for a record 18th time.

A Falcon 9 carrying another 23 of Elon Musk’s company’s Starlink satellites took off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 8:37 p.m.

The historic booster that had previously flown on the Crew Demo-2 mission that took up the first astronauts on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon back in May 2020 and has since flown on the ANASIS-11, CRS-21, Transporter-1, Transporter-3 and now 13 Starlink missions.

It made another successful recovery landing in the Atlantic on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas.

The 60 Space Coast launches continues to build on the record surpassed last month when missions from either Canaveral or neighboring Kennedy Space Center topped the 57 managed in 2002.

So far this year, Canaveral has sent up 49 rockets and KSC 11. All but four launches have been from SpaceX, which also has flown 23 times from California.

2023 Orlando Sentinel. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.