SpaceX Marks IPO Morning With 650th Falcon 9 Launch

HAWTHORNE, Calif. — SpaceX is marking its first day as a publicly traded company in the most fitting way possible: with a rocket launch timed almost perfectly to the opening bell.

A Falcon 9 carrying the Starlink 10-54 mission is set to lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 8:37 a.m. EDT today — less than an hour before SPCX shares begin trading on the Nasdaq. The flight will be the 650th launch of the company's workhorse rocket and its 68th Falcon 9 mission of 2026, a cadence no other launch provider on Earth comes close to matching. It follows a record-setting booster flight just five days ago, underscoring how routine reuse has become for the company.

Two Launches in Two Days

The IPO-morning flight caps a back-to-back doubleheader. On Thursday, another Falcon 9 lofted 24 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California — business as usual even as Wall Street counted down to the company's market debut.

Today's mission carries 29 Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites to low Earth orbit, the 55th dedicated Starlink launch of the year. The full manifest is tracked on SpaceX's official launches page, where 2026 is already shaping up as the busiest year in the company's history.

A Veteran Booster for a Historic Day

Booster B1080 will fly for the 27th time, a résumé that includes two crewed Axiom Space flights to the International Space Station, two cargo resupply missions, and the European Space Agency's Euclid observatory. A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, it will target a touchdown on the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas off the South Carolina coast — the 155th landing on that vessel and the 623rd booster recovery overall.

Weather officers with the 45th Weather Squadron forecast an 80 percent chance of favorable conditions at the window's open.

The Constellation Behind the Valuation

The timing is more than symbolic. Starlink is the financial engine of the newly public SpaceX, with more than 10,500 satellites in orbit and connectivity income that grew from roughly $2 billion in 2024 to $4.4 billion in 2025. The network now drives the majority of SpaceX's revenue, a fact prominently featured in the company's prospectus.

For new shareholders watching their first trading day, the message from Cape Canaveral could not be clearer: the company they just bought into does not pause to celebrate. It launches.