Back-to-back Starlink launches push SpaceX past 11,000 satellites, deepening debates over security and sky crowding

Two rockets lifted off from opposite U.S. coasts in the span of about 13 hours last week, each carrying a familiar payload: another batch of Starlink internet satellites for SpaceX’s growing broadband network.

On Jan. 29, a Falcon 9 climbed out of Vandenberg Space Force Base in California with 25 Starlink spacecraft bound for a polar orbit. Early the next morning on Florida’s Space Coast, another Falcon 9 rose from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station with 29 more. With those back-to-back missions, SpaceX passed 11,000 Starlink satellites launched since 2019 and pushed its active fleet above 9,600, by far the largest commercial constellation ever put in orbit.

The launches — Starlink Groups 17-19 and 6-101 — looked routine on the company’s webcasts, where Falcon 9 missions now blur together in a cadence of ignition flashes and droneship landings. But they highlight how one company has come to operate roughly two-thirds of all working satellites in space and how quickly low Earth orbit is being turned into privately run infrastructure for broadband, military communications and, potentially, future artificial intelligence services, even as regulators and scientists struggle to keep pace.

Two more normal launches in a very abnormal scale-up

The first flight, Starlink Group 17-19, lifted off from Vandenberg’s Space Launch Complex 4-East at 17:53:20 Coordinated Universal Time (9:53 a.m. Pacific) on Jan. 29. The Falcon 9’s first stage — booster B1082 — was flying for the 19th time, a high mark for the company’s reusable fleet. About eight and a half minutes after liftoff, it touched down on the Pacific-based droneship Of Course I Still Love You.

The batch of 25 so-called “v2 mini” satellites headed to a sun-synchronous orbit at roughly 97.6 degrees inclination, part of a polar shell designed to bolster coverage at high latitudes and support government and Earth-observation users. One of those spacecraft was the 11,000th Starlink satellite launched since the program began.

The second mission, Starlink Group 6-101, followed at 07:22 UTC (2:22 a.m. Eastern) on Jan. 30 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. Its Falcon 9 first stage, B1095, flew for the fifth time before landing on the Atlantic droneship Just Read the Instructions. The 29 satellites were targeted to a 43-degree inclination orbit, a mid-latitude shell that carries a large share of Starlink’s internet traffic over North America and other populous regions.

The two flights marked the 595th and 596th Falcon 9 missions and SpaceX’s 12th and 13th orbital launches of 2026, reflecting an early-year tempo of more than one mission every three days. Tracking data show 11,075 Starlink satellites had been launched as of early February, with 9,639 still in orbit and 9,628 functioning. Of those, 8,309 were listed as operational.

A private constellation becomes critical infrastructure

Starlink, operated by SpaceX subsidiary Starlink Services LLC, beams broadband-style connectivity to homes, ships, aircraft, vehicles and government users through thousands of small satellites in low Earth orbit. The network passed 9 million subscribers worldwide by the end of 2025, according to company figures cited in public filings, with revenue estimated in the multibillion-dollar range.

The system has become a lifeline in places where fiber or cellular infrastructure is limited or has been destroyed. In Ukraine, Starlink terminals supplied with foreign funding have kept military units and hospitals online since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly described the service as a backbone for battlefield communications, drone operations and civilian emergency services.

That same ubiquity has created security problems. Ukrainian and Western officials say Russian forces have obtained Starlink terminals through illicit channels and are using them to coordinate drone strikes, including attacks on rail infrastructure and industrial facilities in occupied territory. In response, SpaceX and Ukrainian authorities have introduced new restrictions intended to shut down unauthorized use.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s digital transformation and defense innovation minister, said in recent interviews that the country is moving to a “whitelist” system in which only registered Ukrainian terminals can operate in certain areas. Elon Musk, SpaceX’s chief executive, wrote on his social media platform that the company had deployed software “countermeasures” to limit high-bandwidth service for suspected Russian-operated devices.

The measures have also disrupted some Ukrainian units while they register equipment, highlighting how decisions by a private company can ripple through a war zone. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in 2023 that Starlink was “never meant to be weaponized,” adding, “It was not designed or intended to be used with offensive weapons systems.” Musk has said the network should remain primarily a civilian service, with more overtly military work handled under a separate program called Starshield.

Starshield, announced in 2022, adapts Starlink-based technology for U.S. and allied government customers. The company has a classified contract, reported to be worth about $1.8 billion, with the National Reconnaissance Office to build a new generation of intelligence satellites that could offer near-continuous global coverage.

Regulators race to keep up

While SpaceX expands Starlink’s footprint, U.S. regulators are expanding the legal framework that allows the constellation to grow.

The Federal Communications Commission first authorized a so-called Generation 1 Starlink network of up to 4,425 satellites across several orbital shells. In late 2022, the agency approved 7,500 additional “Gen2” satellites at altitudes around 525 to 535 kilometers, but stopped short of granting SpaceX’s request for nearly 30,000.

In January, the FCC granted a second tranche of 7,500 Gen2 satellites, bringing that total authorization to 15,000. The order allows SpaceX to operate across Ku, Ka, V, E and W bands for both fixed satellite service, such as home and business internet, and mobile satellite service, including direct-to-device offerings.

The commission has required operators to meet debris-mitigation standards and coordinate to avoid harmful interference but has faced criticism from some astronomers and competitors who say approvals are moving faster than safeguards. SpaceX has separately asked regulators to let it lower the altitudes of some Gen2 shells to around 480 kilometers, arguing that satellites at lower orbits naturally reenter more quickly if they fail, reducing long-term debris risk and improving latency.

On top of the Gen2 build-out, SpaceX has filed a separate application asking the FCC to approve a new constellation of up to one million satellites acting as “orbital data centers” to process and relay computing workloads, including artificial intelligence. Analysts say only a fraction of that number is likely to be launched, but the filing has widened concerns among astronomers and space policy experts about the long-term carrying capacity of low Earth orbit.

Internationally, the International Telecommunication Union has received more than one million satellite filings from governments on behalf of prospective operators, far exceeding anything yet deployed. The U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space has placed “Dark and Quiet Skies” — a broad agenda on astronomy and large constellations — on its workplan for at least five years.

A brightening sky and a crowded neighborhood

Astronomers and dark-sky advocates say the rapid rise of Starlink, along with planned constellations from Amazon, OneWeb, China and others, is already affecting scientific observations and could change the appearance of the night sky.

Studies led by teams working with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile have found that satellite trails can contaminate about 1% of pixels in some twilight images in a world with tens of thousands of low Earth orbit satellites, forcing observatories to mask or correct affected data and in some cases lose observing time. SpaceX has worked with researchers to darken its spacecraft, testing non-reflective coatings and sun visors and changing orientation during twilight passes.

Updated surveys, however, still find many newer Starlink satellites brighter than levels considered safe for sensitive instruments, particularly in wide-field surveys. Radio astronomers have raised separate alarms about out-of-band emissions and interference with frequencies reserved for cosmology and planetary defense.

The American Astronomical Society has warned that large constellations present “substantial adverse impacts” for optical and radio astronomy and for the orbital environment. It has also flagged potential atmospheric concerns from the metals and black carbon released when thousands of satellites reenter each year.

Dark-sky groups say that by 2030, more than 50,000 satellites in low Earth orbit could increase the overall brightness of the night sky by as much as 250%, reducing the number of stars visible to the naked eye and making satellites a common feature overhead. The International Astronomical Union has described the night sky as “a resource of all humanity” and urged governments to treat its visibility and scientific value as part of cultural heritage.

National security and economic growth from the same pad

At Vandenberg, where the Jan. 29 mission began, U.S. Space Force leaders have explicitly linked commercial launches like Starlink to national defense. “Each launch approved at Vandenberg SFB is designated by the federal government to strengthen national security, advance economic growth, and achieve critical national space objectives,” the base said in a statement on the Starlink 17-19 flight.

The same industrial capacity that routinely flies Falcon 9 boosters 15, 19 or more times in support of a commercial broadband network is now part of the United States’ military and intelligence posture. It is also a pillar of internet access in remote villages, passenger aircraft and war zones and a source of growing tension with astronomers and competing operators sharing the same orbital region.

As the two Falcon 9s from California and Florida disappeared into the upper atmosphere, they looked like just another pair of launches on a busy spaceflight calendar. The satellites they carried will circle the planet for years, routing emails, streaming video, guiding drones and, increasingly, shaping debates on how crowded the sky above Earth should become and who gets to decide.