SpaceX's Final Florida Falcon 9 Starlink Launch Marks Shift to Starship on East Coast

SpaceX Vice President of Launch Kiko Dontchev said in a Tuesday post-launch tweet that the August 25 predawn Falcon 9 Starlink mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station was 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," Dontchev wrote. "From here on, Starlink missions out of Florida will fly on Starship." The West Coast team will continue launching Starlink from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Cadence Recap

The August 25 launch clocked in as the 54th orbital rocket launch of 2026 from the Cape, with Starlink missions accounting for 33 of those 54 launches. The booster, B1067, made its 37th mission after entering service in June 2021, setting a new reuse record, and landed on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas 8.5 minutes after liftoff. The 29-satellite payload brought the active Starlink constellation to more than 11,000 spacecraft. In total, SpaceX has flown 100 orbital missions already this year across Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Starship test flights.

What's Next on the Eastern Range

Florida's Space Coast will continue hosting Falcon flights in the near term. A triple-core Falcon Heavy is scheduled to launch NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from pad 39A on August 30. A Falcon 9 will then boost NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 — NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov — to the International Space Station. SpaceX crews continue building launch infrastructure for future Starship launches at pad 39A and Launch Complex 37, with company officials eyeing a maiden Florida Starship liftoff by year's end.

The Bigger Starship Shift

In a tweet Saturday, Aug. 22, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said crews will eventually phase out the venerable Falcon 9 in favor of Starship. "Once Starship is flying reliably several times per week, it makes sense to shift super scarce SpaceX engineering and production resources to Starship to get launch rate to several times per day, which means winding down Falcon," Musk wrote. In Florida, SpaceX is building Gigabay at KSC and planning a Starship test facility north of the Roberts Road complex to support the next-generation vehicle.

What to Watch Through Year-End

Three checkpoints follow. SpaceX's next Starship test, expected in early-to-mid September from Starbase, will determine whether the East Coast Starship transition has a flying vehicle to hand off to. Vandenberg's continued Starlink cadence — 44 of 76 Starlink missions have flown from the West Coast in 2026 — will be the operational backbone while Starship reaches operational reliability. And the first Florida Starship launch from pad 39A or Launch Complex 37, targeted before year-end, will be the visible milestone confirming that the Falcon era on the Space Coast has truly ended.