Update June 7, 12:50 a.m. EDT (0450 UTC): SpaceX landed the booster on the drone ship.
SpaceX launched a combination of 21 Starlink and two Starshield satellites on Saturday night from Vandenberg Space Force Base.
Starshield is an alternate version of the Starlink satellite architecture the government. SpaceX hasn’t announced which U.S. government agency ordered these two satellites or if they are for a foreign government.
Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket on the Starlink 17-43 mission from Space Launch Complex 4 East happened at 9:24:30 p.m. PDT on Saturday, June 6 (12:24:30 a.m. EDT / 0424:30 UTC on Sunday, June 7).
SpaceX flew the mission using the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1097. This was its tenth flight after launching NROL-172, the Twilight rideshare, and seven batches of Starlink satellites.
A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1097 landed on the drone ship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You.’ This was the 201st landing on this vessel and the 620th booster landing to date.
While never publicly declared by the National Reconnaissance Office, the 13 launches supporting its “multi-phenomenology proliferated architecture” satellite constellation are believed to consist of Starshield satellites. In April 2024, Reuters reported that Northrop Grumman “is providing sensors for some of the SpaceX satellites.”
In 2025, SpaceX launched two missions, Starlink 13-1 and Starlink 13-4, which reportedly included two Starshield satellites each as well, similar to the upcoming Starlink 17-43 mission. Those satellites, logged by the U.S. Space Force as USA 485, 486, 549, and 550, have also not been publicly connected to a specific part of the U.S. government.
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