SpaceX Packs August With Starlink and NASA Missions

HAWTHORNE, Calif. — SpaceX wasted no time opening August, launching its latest batch of Starlink satellites from California on Tuesday and setting up a stretch of high-profile missions that runs from routine internet flights to a flagship NASA science observatory.

A Fast Start To The Month

Tuesday's flight from Vandenberg Space Force Base carried 24 Starlink satellites aboard a veteran Falcon 9 booster making its 34th trip to space, part of a launch rhythm that has SpaceX flying more often than any rocket operator in history. The mission lifted off just hours before the company's first earnings call as a public company, a fitting bookend for a business whose cadence has become its signature. That relentless pace has been on display all summer, from national-security launches to commercial rideshares, including the classified flight we covered when SpaceX launched the NROL-95 spy satellite and landed its 642nd booster.

Two Marquee Missions On Deck

The bigger headlines are still to come. SpaceX is preparing to launch NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on a Falcon Heavy rocket no earlier than August 30, sending one of the agency's most anticipated observatories toward its vantage point beyond the Moon. Roman is designed to survey the sky with a field of view hundreds of times wider than Hubble's, hunting for dark energy clues and thousands of exoplanets.

Close behind is Crew-13, the next rotation of astronauts bound for the International Space Station aboard a Crew Dragon, targeted for no earlier than September 12. Together the two flights showcase the breadth of SpaceX's partnership with NASA — heavy-lift science on one pad, human spaceflight on another. The company's deepening government relationship was underscored last month when it landed a major military contract, which we detailed in our report on SpaceX's $1.6 billion Space Force deal for 18 Falcon 9 flights.

Building Toward Starship

Between the Starlink flights and the NASA missions, SpaceX engineers are also reviewing data from Starship's most recent test as they prepare the vehicle for what could be its first orbital-class flight. If the schedule holds, the coming weeks will pack science, crewed spaceflight and continued constellation growth into a single manifest. A full breakdown of Tuesday's launch and the missions ahead is available through Spaceflight Now's live coverage.

For SpaceX, August is shaping up as a microcosm of its year: a steady drumbeat of Starlink launches punctuated by landmark flights for NASA — all while the company pushes toward the next chapter with Starship.