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SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites to orbit from Florida

a black and white rocket launches into a dark night sky

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 28 Starlink satellites from Florida on May 10, 2025. (Image credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX sent another batch of its Starlink internet satellites to orbit from Florida's Space Coast this morning (May 10), its second launch in a little over six hours.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 2:28 a.m. EDT (0628 GMT).

The liftoff followed closely on the heels of another Starlink mission, which launched from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base on Friday evening (May 9).

a black and white rocket rests on the deck of a ship at sea at night

The Falcon 9's first stage came back for a landing as planned about eight minutes after liftoff, touching down on the drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas" in the Atlantic Ocean. It was the 11th flight for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, continued carrying the 23 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO). They're scheduled to be deployed 65 minutes after launch.

This morning's liftoff was the 55th Falcon 9 launch of 2025. Thirty-eight of those missions have been devoted to building out Starlink, the biggest satellite constellation ever assembled.

Starlink currently consists of more than 7,300 operational satellites, and more are going up all the time.

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Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.