SpaceX Achieves Historic 600th Falcon Booster Landing — Starlink 17-22 Mission

SpaceX launched Starlink Group 17-22 from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California at approximately 8:23 a.m. PDT (15:23 UTC) on April 19, 2026, successfully completing the mission and achieving SpaceX's historic 600th cumulative Falcon booster recovery. Falcon 9 first stage B1097 — on its seventh flight — executed a flawless entry burn and precision touchdown on drone ship 'Of Course I Still Love You' (OCISLY) in the Pacific Ocean, the 191st recovery on that vessel. The 25 Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites were deployed to a sun-synchronous orbital shell, expanding the Starlink Group 17 configuration. The 600th booster landing milestone marks a defining chapter in reusability history: from December 21, 2015 — when SpaceX first landed an orbital-class rocket booster at LZ-1 after delivering 11 ORBCOMM satellites — to 600 landings across Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy variants, achieved on land pads (LZ-1, LZ-2, LZ-4, LZ-40) and four autonomous drone ships. The first 100 landings took 30 months (through June 2018); the second 100 just 14 months; by 2025-2026, SpaceX was averaging a new landing every 3 days. This was SpaceX's 48th orbital launch of 2026, sustaining a cadence of approximately one launch per 2.5 days. The launch was scrubbed from its original April 18 window due to unspecified range conditions before proceeding successfully on April 19.