SpaceX launched three telecommunications satellites into orbit today (September 13) in a historic mission for the company. A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida today at 2:49 pm EDT (1849 GMT), carrying the final three satellites for Luxembourg-based SES’s O3b mPOWER constellation. It was the 700th mission to date for SpaceX’s Falcon family of rockets, according to the company. That family first spread its wings in March 2006, when the Falcon 1 debuted. The Falcon 1 flew a total of five times, two of them successfully, before giving way to the workhorse Falcon 9 in 2010. The Falcon 9 has made the vast majority of the family’s flights; the only other member, the still-active Falcon Heavy, has launched 13 times to date. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches three O3b mPOWER satellites for telecommunications company SES from Florida on September 13, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX) The first stage of the Falcon 9 returned to Earth just under nine minutes after launch today, landing in the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX “A Shortfall of Gravitas” unmanned ship. It was the 29th flight of this particular booster, called B1080. Meanwhile, the rocket’s upper stage continued to carry the O3b mPOWER trio into medium Earth orbit (MEO). The satellites were deployed as planned and launched at an altitude of 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) for a period of 14 minutes, beginning approximately 33.5 minutes after launch. You might like SES already operates 10 O3b mPOWER satellites in MEO. The spacecraft that lifted off today will complete the constellation, which is “specifically designed to deliver predictable low latency, exceptional performance, and unprecedented flexibility for industries where uptime is not optional,” according to the company. “It transforms the way networks operate by combining advanced software-defined satellites with an intelligent terrestrial and software ecosystem, ensuring guaranteed performance, even as global bandwidth demands increase,” the company wrote. The O3b mPOWER satellites, built by Boeing, weigh about 3,750 pounds (1,700 kilograms) each. SpaceX has launched them all, in six Falcon 9 launches starting in December 2022. Today’s launch was SpaceX’s 107th orbital mission of the year. The Falcon 9 has made 105 of those flights, and the Falcon Heavy made the other two. SpaceX also launched two suborbital test flights of its Starship megarocket in 2026 and is preparing for the third, which will apparently take the giant vehicle to orbit for the first time.
