SpaceX breaks Vandenberg's annual launch record as Starship Flight 15's ship reportedly fires an engine

SpaceX has helped set a new annual launch record at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, as work continued in Texas on the Starship that will attempt the first tower catch of a ship upper stage.

A record at Vandenberg

At 12:25am Pacific time on Tuesday 27 October (07:25 UK time), a Falcon 9 launched 27 Starlink satellites from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg, according to SpaceX’s mission page.

It was the 72nd launch from California in 2026, beating the record of 71 set over the whole of 2025, according to Space Force officials quoted by the Ventura County Star, part of the USA TODAY Network. A Starlink launch on 23 October had matched the 2025 total.

“Today’s historic 72nd launch does more than break a 50-year record,” Col James Horne III, the commander of Space Launch Delta 30, which runs the base, said in a statement to the network. “It highlights Vandenberg’s position as the busiest spaceport in the world.”

Horne also suggested that 100 launches a year could be reached by 2027. Space Force officials have previously indicated that around 80 rockets could launch from the base by the end of this year, the paper reported.

The first-stage booster, B1082, was making its 26th flight, SpaceX said. It landed on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean about eight minutes after liftoff. The booster entered service in January 2024 and has also flown the USSF-62, OneWeb Launch 20, NROL-145 and Transporter-18 missions, Spaceflight Now reports.

Space.com counts the mission as the 117th Falcon 9 launch of 2026.

Ship 42 reportedly fires up

In south Texas, Ship 42, the upper stage for Starship Flight 15, completed a single-engine static fire that demonstrated a deorbit burn, according to the tracking site Next Spaceflight. NASASpaceflight, which streams Starbase activity, also reported the test, at SpaceX’s Massey’s test site on Monday evening local time (early on 27 October UK time).

SpaceX had not confirmed the Ship 42 test in any statement we had seen at the time of writing.

The ship test came after SpaceX said on X that Booster 22, the Super Heavy first stage for Flight 15, had completed a “full duration 33-engine static fire” on Sunday 25 October. For SpaceX’s $40bn GPU financing and Musk’s wider Flight 15 plans, see our related story, “SpaceX strikes $40bn GPU lease it calls the “largest GPU financing ever”, as Starship eyes a double catch”.

What Flight 15 will try

SpaceX’s chief executive, Elon Musk, has said Flight 15 will attempt the first launch tower catch of a Starship upper stage, Space.com reports. Space.com says a successful catch would be a significant step towards SpaceX’s goal of making Starship fully reusable.

There is no official launch date. Space.com estimates that, if recent Starship campaigns are a guide, Flight 15 could lift off in mid-to-late November. That is the website’s estimate, not a SpaceX date. SpaceX has also not confirmed what Flight 15 will carry, though Space.com says it could be another batch of Starlink V3 satellites.

The previous flight, Flight 14 on 28 September, reached orbit for the first time and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, although an upper-stage Raptor engine shut down early and the mission was cut short, according to Space.com.