CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE FORCE — The Sunday night liftoff of more than 20 Starlink satellites marked the 300th launch for SpaceX.

After a number of delays, the Falcon 9 sent up the Starlink 6-37 mission from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 8:52 p.m. ET, stated the company.

The launch was supposed to go up on Saturday night, but after a series of delays, SpaceX scrubbed the launch. It did not state why.

Leaving the launch pad

This was the 12th launch for SpaceX’s first-stage booster B1073. The 11 missions it has successfully launched before this one are:

• ispace's HAKUTO-R and NASA's Lunar Flashlight
• SES-22 telecommunications satellite
• Amazonas Nexus
• CRS-27
• 7 Starlink satellite missions

After the stage separation, the rocket’s first-stage booster landed on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas that was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean..

About the mission

Going into low-Earth orbit, the 23 Starlink satellites are expected to join the thousands already up there that provide internet service, stated Starlink, which is a SpaceX company.

Before the launch, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics’ Dr. Jonathan McDowell has recorded the following information about the Starlink satellites.

• 5,309 are in orbit
• 5,273 in working order
• 4,621 are in operational orbit

300th SpaceX Launch

300th SpaceX launch

From satellites to making historical launches like the Demo-2 mission — the 2020 mission that saw the first time that U.S. astronauts launched from American soil in nine years — SpaceX has made commercial space flight a household name.

SpaceX’s Falcon rockets are the first ones to be reusable and able to land, either on drone ships or on landing zones. This has made the company a near go-to for U.S. government agencies, both national and international space agencies and private companies when it comes to launching missions, either to low-Earth orbit or deep space.

And while the accomplishments are impressive, SpaceX also has a history of failing, such as the recent attempt of launching its Starship. But that is the nature of rockets in general: It takes awhile to get it right.