Live coverage: SpaceX to close out October with Halloween eve Falcon 9 launch

Central Coast skywatchers got one more treat before Halloween: a Falcon 9 lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on the night of Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, carrying the latest batch of Starlink satellites on what turned out to be a milestone flight for the workhorse rocket.

A milestone on the eve of Halloween

As Spaceflight Now reported, the Starlink 15-18 mission launched from Space Launch Complex 4 East at 9:04 p.m. PDT, adding 27 broadband satellites to SpaceX's low Earth orbit constellation. The flight marked the 700th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket to date — a number that would have sounded like science fiction a decade ago, and one that Vandenberg has played a substantial role in reaching.

The rocket flew a southeasterly trajectory after leaving the pad, a flight path familiar to anyone who has watched Vandenberg launches from the Santa Barbara County coastline or the vantage points along Highway 1. Because it headed southeast rather than due south, viewers from Lompoc to Santa Maria and points down the coast would have seen the rocket arc out over the Pacific — typically one of the more photogenic trajectories from SLC-4E, especially under clear late-October skies.

Booster B1093 flies again

The mission used first stage booster B1093, flying for the 18th time. According to Spaceflight Now, its previous flights included Transporter-16, two missions for the Space Development Agency, and 14 batches of Starlink satellites — a résumé that captures just how routine booster reuse has become at Vandenberg.

About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1093 touched down on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You, stationed in the Pacific. It was the 231st landing on that vessel and the 675th Falcon booster landing overall. Droneship landings mean no Central Coast sonic boom for this one — the kind you'd get with a return-to-Vandenberg landing — but they also mean the show stretches well downrange for those tracking the entry burn from shore.

Vandenberg's outsized share of 2026

The Halloween-eve flight was SpaceX's 11th and final orbital launch of October, and it underscored how much of the company's 2026 manifest has run through the 805. Spaceflight Now's month-by-month breakdown shows Vandenberg carried six of the company's ten orbital launches in October, and the base has shouldered a heavy load all year — including nine of SpaceX's 13 launches in June and eight in July.

All told, VSFB accounted for well over half of SpaceX's orbital flights in several months of 2026, a striking shift for a base that was once considered the quiet sibling of Cape Canaveral. For the local launch-watching community — the folks who line Ocean Avenue in Lompoc and populate the roadside pullouts on launch nights — that cadence has meant a near-constant rhythm of dusk and nighttime launches, many of them Starlink missions like this one.

The bigger picture: Falcon winding down

There's a bittersweet note for Falcon fans in the details. Spaceflight Now reported that SpaceX is beginning to wind down the Falcon program as it shifts focus to Starship, with NASA and others acknowledging that Falcon 9 may stop flying commercial and government missions within the next few years. The recent Starlink 15-16 launch on Oct. 27 marked the first time since July 2025 that SpaceX's 365-day launch rate dropped below 150 orbital missions — down from a peak of 171 reached in December 2025.

On a recent earnings call, Elon Musk said SpaceX expects Starship to fly weekly at some point in the first half of 2027, and potentially twice weekly by the end of that year. The next Starship test flight, Flight 15, is anticipated in mid-November from Starbase, Texas.

None of that changes the math for Vandenberg in the near term, of course — Falcon 9 remains the only vehicle flying orbital missions from the base, and Starlink missions like this one continue to keep SLC-4E busy. But if Falcon really is entering its final years, every launch from the Central Coast becomes worth savoring a little more. The 700th Falcon 9 flight happened here, on Halloween eve, in front of the people who've watched every one of them from their backyards.