52 In a quiet week for rocket launches worldwide, SpaceX has launched the 500th orbital flight of a Falcon 9 during its first of possibly two launches this week. Outside of the U.S., Gilmour Space is expected to attempt to launch the first flight of its Eris launch vehicle from Australia. As many as 10 orbital launches have typically taken place from sites across the world in recent weeks. Of these, the Starlink Group 15-7 mission was the last orbital launch to take flight during the first half of 2025, and marked the 500th launch of a Falcon 9, when including 2020’s suborbital Crew Dragon in-flight abort test. It also set a new milestone when booster B1067 became the first in the fleet to fly 29 times. The company set new records in the last days of June with back-to-back launches from Florida and California of the Starlink Group 10-34 and Group 15-7 missions. These were SpaceX’s 80th and 81st Falcon missions of the year and set a new pad turnaround record of 56 hours, 31 minutes, and 10 seconds at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) in the process. Three launches had taken place from the pad in less than five days. On the west coast, SpaceX also achieved a new five-day record in Vandenberg, turning booster B1088 around from its arrival via barge to its subsequent launch, on the second of these two missions. The first half of the year drew to a close with 142 orbital launches worldwide, lofting over 2,130 payloads and 15 humans into orbit. This cadence represents a 16% increase on 2024’s midway count of 122 orbital launches. Starlink satellites are released during Starlink Group 15-5 – the 125th mission from Pad 4E (Credit: SpaceX)