Starlink 17-22 Scrubbed Saturday — 600th Booster Landing Milestone Targeting April 19

SpaceX's planned April 18, 2026 launch of Starlink 17-22 from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California was scrubbed on Saturday, postponed to Sunday, April 19. The mission — which would carry 25 Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites to sun-synchronous orbit — is scheduled to use Falcon 9 first stage B1097 on its seventh flight. The postponed Starlink 17-22 launch carries a milestone designation: a successful B1097 booster landing on drone ship 'Of Course I Still Love You' (OCISLY) in the Pacific Ocean would mark SpaceX's 600th total Falcon booster recovery — a remarkable milestone for a company that first landed an orbital rocket booster on December 21, 2015. The 600-recovery milestone underscores the operational maturity of Falcon 9 reusability, now routine across 47 launches in 2026 alone. The scrub delays but does not diminish the significance: SpaceX is within one flight of crossing the 600-landing threshold less than 11 years after the technology was first demonstrated. The rescheduled attempt targets Sunday, April 19, 2026.