B1063 is up for its thirty-fifth

Delayed from 1 September. Spaceflight Now's schedule page says so in plain type. Starlink 15-24 is already on the same page for 6 September: another 27 V2 Minis, booster B1088 on its 19th, same droneship, delayed from 4 and 5 September. Vandenberg is the Starlink pad right now. That is not a vibe. That is the traffic list.

Florida handed the Falcon 9 Starlink work west last week. On 25 August SpaceX flew Starlink 10-49 from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral. Kiko Dontchev, vice president of launch, called it the last planned Falcon 9 Starlink launch from Florida. "This morning's @SpaceX mission from pad 40 was the last planned Falcon 9 Starlink launch from Florida (and it launched on the fleet leading booster!!), marking the end of an era for these launches on the East Coast." Then the next line: "From here on, Starlink missions out of Florida will fly on Starship." And the West Coast sentence that actually governs Wednesday morning: "The West Coast team will continue regularly launching Starlink from Vandenberg."

He put a number on the Cape years. "In the last seven years, Falcon has flown ~260 Starlink missions from the Cape… can't wait until we launch that and many more with Starship!" Spaceflight Now quoted the follow-up the same morning: "Super proud of this incredible team. You've made Falcon 9 the most reliable launch vehicle in history. You also helped build the largest low-Earth orbit satellite constellation providing connectivity to millions around the world, and you've set the foundation for what's next." This is not the Starship debut. This is the Falcon that still flies the dishes while the Cape builds that foundation.

The day after pad 40's last Falcon Starlink, Vandenberg flew Starlink 15-22. 2:35 a.m. PDT on 26 August, 0935 UTC. Booster B1082, 24th flight. Twenty-seven more V2 Minis. Landing on Of Course I Still Love You about 8.5 minutes after liftoff. Spaceflight Now called that the 221st landing on that vessel and the 655th Falcon booster landing to date. Space.com had Mike Wall on the same predawn: 101st Falcon 9 liftoff of 2026. Wednesday's 15-23 is the next stack in that west-coast cadence, not a special. A delayed Tuesday that became a Wednesday.

B1063 is a Vandenberg booster with a NASA childhood. First flight: Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, 21 November 2020, from SLC-4E, landing at LZ-4 on the base. Second notable: DART, 24 November 2021, same pad, landing on Of Course I Still Love You. After that the tail number became a Starlink tool. Trackers list it as Block 5, mostly West Coast, a mix of return-to-landing-zone and droneship recoveries. Next Spaceflight put this mission as flight 35 with a 29-day turnaround. Space Launch Schedule had the previous flight on 4 August and a 28-day turnaround. Four weeks, give or take a day. That is a working core, not a museum piece rolled out for a camera.

The rocket is still a Falcon 9 Block 5. About 70 metres tall. 3.7-metre first-stage diameter. Two stages. The fairing is the usual 5.2-metre Starlink shell. The payload is 27 second-generation mini satellites for the same low-Earth-orbit broadband constellation SpaceX has been stacking all year. Spaceflight Now, on the 15-22 flight, said the company had already flown more than 2,000 Starlink satellites to orbit in 2026. This batch is Group 15-23. The group number is the plane. The 27 is the crate.

Of Course I Still Love You is the Pacific recovery ship. It has been the West Coast droneship for years, sitting off Baja for these south-easterly Vandenberg tracks. B1063 has sat down on it before. DART did. Recent Starlink flights from 4E have used the same deck. A 35th flight with an ASDS attempt is how this booster earns its keep. I will not write the landing as fact until Spaceflight Now, SpaceX, or Next Spaceflight posts it. The target is the ship. The outcome is a later line.

Why Vandenberg for Starlink now? Because the Cape is being cleared for Starship. Dontchev said the Florida team is setting the foundation for what is next. Crew Dragon, Falcon Heavy, and other customer missions still have Florida on the schedule. Spaceflight Now's list still has Crew-13 from SLC-40, delayed from 12 September on an oxidizer leak in Dragon. Starlink, on Falcon 9, is a California job until Starship takes that payload on the east coast. Ars Technica had the rate change in plain English after 25 August: Florida dropping from eight or nine launches a month toward perhaps two, while Vandenberg keeps the dish cadence.

The clock on this one moved. Preview at 08:42 UTC. Schedule page at 08:14 UTC. Next Spaceflight still showing 08:42:12. Rocket Launch Live had 08:18 UTC and a result field that was not set. Launch times slip. Range, weather, a hold. The mission as briefed: Starlink 15-23, Falcon 9, B1063, SLC-4E, 27 V2 Minis, OCISLY, delayed from 1 September. If you want a splashdown photograph, wait for the ships. The news that does not need a landing is the tail number. Thirty-five. Ordinary.

Pad 4E sits on Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, California. Space Launch Delta 30 is the unit on the base. SpaceX has been flying Starlink south-east off that concrete for years. Wednesday's stack is one more crate for the constellation while Florida's Falcon pads make room for a different vehicle. B1063 has the 35th. The droneship is on station. The satellites are in the fairing. That is the West Coast night.