SpaceX celebrates its 700th Falcon flight by lofting three O3b mPOWER telecom satellites

At 2:49 p.m. EDT on September 13, a familiar roar rose over Cape Canaveral Space Force Station as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 thundered toward the sky. It wasn’t just any launch – this was the 700th mission for the Falcon family, a milestone that feels a bit like a birthday cake for the rockets.

The payload? Three brand‑new telecom satellites bound for the O3b mPOWER constellation, the brain‑child of Luxembourg‑based SES. These are the final trio needed to round the fleet out to a full complement of thirteen spacecraft, each one designed to beam low‑latency, high‑throughput data to industries that can’t afford any downtime.

About nine minutes after lift‑off, the first stage performed its signature return, splashing down on the ocean‑borne drone ship christened “A Shortfall of Gravitas.” The booster, B1080, is a veteran – this was its 29th flight, and it’s still going strong.

Meanwhile, the second stage kept pushing northward, ferrying the satellites to a medium‑Earth orbit roughly 5,000 miles (8,000 km) above Earth. Starting about 33½ minutes after launch, the trio of satellites were released over a 14‑minute window, each separating gently into its designated slot.

Every O3b mPOWER satellite weighs in at about 3,750 pounds (≈1,700 kg) and was built by Boeing. SpaceX has already launched all of them across six Falcon 9 flights that began in December 2022 – you could say the rockets and the satellites have grown up together.

Booster B1080 isn’t a rookie; its résumé reads like a SpaceX bingo card: Ax‑2, Euclid, Ax‑3, CRS‑30, SES ASTRA 1P, NG‑21, plus a dozen Starlink missions. In total, this was SpaceX’s 107th orbital mission of the year, with 105 of those coming from Falcon 9 and the other two from Falcon Heavy.

And there’s more on the horizon. Earlier in 2026 SpaceX flew two sub‑orbital test hops with its massive Starship vehicle, and a third flight – this one aiming for a full orbital attempt – is already in the works.

All told, today’s launch was a reminder of how far the Falcon lineage has come since the modest Falcon 1 first took flight back in 2006. From a handful of attempts to seven hundred missions, the family’s evolution feels almost cinematic, especially when you watch those bright boosters splash back onto a floating landing pad.