SpaceX launches 5,000th Starlink satellite toward orbit

SpaceX launched 22 more of its Starlink internet satellites toward orbit on Saturday.

It was a milestone mission for SpaceX, bringing the total number of Starlink satellites the company has lofted to date to over 5,000, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, Azernews reports citing Space.com.

The satellites lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station tonight at 9:05 p.m. EDT (0105 GMT on Sunday, Aug. 27). About 8.5 minutes later, the Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth for a landing on the SpaceX drone ship Just Read the Instructions, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

It was the third launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, kept on flying. It's scheduled to deploy the 22 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO) about 65 minutes after launch.

Crew-7 had been scheduled to get off the ground on Friday morning (Aug. 25), but SpaceX pushed it back by 24 hours to conduct more analyses.

Five thousand Starlink satellites is a lot to be sure, but the number is likely to grow far into the future. SpaceX has permission to deploy 12,000 Starlink spacecraft in LEO, and it has applied for permission for about 30,000 more on top of that.