Falcon 9 Flies for the 700th Time: Halloween-Eve Starlink Launch Caps October for SpaceX

Seven hundred. SpaceX capped October with a Halloween-eve launch from California that doubled as a milestone for the most-flown rocket family in history: Starlink 15-18 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 9:04 p.m. PDT on Friday, October 30 — 12:04 a.m. EDT and 0404 UTC on October 31 — and Spaceflight Now confirms it was the 700th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket to date.

The mission is the completed flight we previewed in SpaceX targets a Friday night Vandenberg launch. It carried 27 Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites toward low Earth orbit on a southeasterly trajectory, and the upper stage deployed them about 62 minutes after liftoff, according to Space.com's launch report.

The rocket's first stage, booster B1093, was flying for the 18th time, following a career that includes the Transporter-16 rideshare, two missions for the Space Development Agency and 14 batches of Starlink satellites. About 8.5 minutes after liftoff it landed on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You, stationed in the Pacific Ocean.

That touchdown was the 231st landing on that vessel and the 675th Falcon booster landing overall — numbers that explain why a 700th launch can sound routine. The fleet's flight record still belongs to another booster, B1067, which set the mark at 37 flights this past August.

Spaceflight Now counts the Halloween-eve mission as SpaceX's 11th and final orbital flight of October, and Space.com puts it as the 118th Falcon 9 flight of 2026 so far. The launch also extended the record year for Vandenberg and for California launches that the mission's preview coverage documented — a West Coast cadence that has made SLC-4E one of the busiest pads on Earth.

Yet the milestone arrives with the programme's centre of gravity shifting. Spaceflight Now reports that SpaceX is starting to wind down the Falcon programme as it turns its focus to Starship: the Starlink 15-16 launch on October 27 was the first time since July 2025 that the company's rolling 365-day launch total dropped below 150, down from a peak of 171 in December 2025, and SpaceX ceased flying Falcon 9 Starlink missions from Florida in August.

The next headline is already on the calendar. SpaceX's next Starship flight, Flight 15 from Starbase, Texas, is anticipated in mid-November, and Spaceflight Now reports the company plans to attempt a catch of the Starship upper stage during it — a first, if it comes off, for the vehicle SpaceX intends to succeed Falcon.

Falcon 9 is not done — government and commercial missions remain on its manifest — but flight 700 lands differently knowing the successor is being readied in Texas. Milestones in this programme now measure two things at once: how far the workhorse has come, and how long it has left at the top of the manifest.

The 27 satellites deployed on this flight join the largest constellation ever assembled, and every Starlink batch changes what crosses your sky in the weeks that follow. WorldEye's satellite tracker follows objects in orbit live, and the space station tracker keeps the ISS — still the brightest regular passer — separate from the trains of new arrivals.

Watch for the freshest Starlink train on a clear evening this week: a line of evenly spaced lights, rising together, is very likely flight 700's payload, settling into its working orbit.