SpaceX Marks 700th Falcon Flight as Starship Countdown Tightens
Published on 09/14/2026 at 17:01 | Editorial boerse-global.de
SpaceX notched a milestone over the weekend that few launch operators will ever approach: the 700th flight of a Falcon rocket. The mission, flown Sunday for long-time customer SES, carried three satellites to orbit and underlined just how routine the company's launch cadence has become.
The booster assigned to the job, a Falcon 9 first stage designated B1080, logged its 29th mission. Its résumé reads like a cross-section of SpaceX's entire business — four crewed trips to the International Space Station, delivery of the European Space Agency's Euclid telescope, and 22 batches of Starlink satellites.
Breaking down the 700 total, 687 flights belong to the Falcon 9 and 13 to the Falcon Heavy. The Sunday launch, part of the mPOWER-F mission, served as another advertisement for reusability, the trait that turned the Falcon line into the workhorse of both commercial and government spaceflight.
A Launch Manifest Running at Full Tilt
The weekend milestone sits inside one of the busiest stretches on SpaceX's calendar. A Falcon 9 carrying the SES O3b mPOWER satellite was poised to lift off from Cape Canaveral, while the next Starship test flight edges closer. For the Starship system, launch warnings point to a possible window no earlier than September 15, with the company's own target set at September 18 at 12:15 UTC. That flight would be the third for the Version 3 configuration and the first to deploy Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit. Static fire tests on Ship 41 and Booster 21 wrapped up earlier this month.
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Military work is proceeding in parallel. On Thursday, a Falcon 9 launched the classified USSF-153 mission for the U.S. Space Force from Vandenberg Space Force Base, with the first stage landing safely. Days earlier, a Falcon 9 booster set an internal record by flying for the 23rd time — a marker of how far the fleet's operational maturity has come.
Starlink's tempo remains just as brisk. In early September, SpaceX deployed 27 more satellites from Vandenberg as part of its 80th Starlink mission of the year. Looking further out, the company has said future Starlink launches from Florida will shift to Starship, a sign that the heavy-lift vehicle is expected to eventually take over the constellation's high-volume business. The same logic is driving SpaceX to move Falcon-based Starlink launches toward the West Coast, freeing up capacity at its Florida pads for Starship-Super Heavy missions. The company still aims to fly its first Starship from Florida before year's end.
Compute Ambitions Take Center Stage
Beyond the launch pads, SpaceX is pushing hard into ground-based computing. At a Goldman Sachs industry conference last Thursday, CFO Bret Johnsen unveiled an AI hosting agreement worth $1.11 billion per month. The contract begins December 1 and builds on existing partnerships, including one with Google.
That theme carried into the Communacopia + Technology conference, where the company reaffirmed plans to expand its AI infrastructure — including computing capacity in orbit starting next year. The combination of military launches, steady Starlink expansion, and the coming Starship test paints a picture of a company growing on several fronts at once: launch services, satellite internet, and data-center infrastructure.
International demand for SpaceX-backed services keeps climbing as well. According to Reuters, the United Kingdom has now spent just under $40 million on the company's satellite services, a signal of SpaceX's growing role in government communications infrastructure.
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Stock Steadies Above Its Trend Line
In Monday trading, the shares slipped modestly to EUR 129.36, down 0.7 percent. The prior Friday's close came in at EUR 130.32, a gain of 2.1 percent on the day. Over 30 days, the stock is up 7.7 percent and trades roughly 11 percent above its 50-day average of EUR 116.69.
The June 52-week high of EUR 194.46 remains 33 percent away — a gap that captures the wide swings of recent months, volatility that stems partly from the many business lines SpaceX is expanding simultaneously.
Analysts remain constructive. Wells Fargo trimmed its price target slightly on September 9, from $215 to $212, while keeping a Buy rating on the stock.
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