A record breaking early morning launch for SpaceX with Starlink 6-32 & popular first stage Falcon 9 booster B-1058 19th flight & landing a new corporate record!  Liftoff occurred at 12:33 AM on Saturday morning December 23, 2023 from SLC-40 launch complex in streaky overcast skies but the first stage liftoff was still visible from Marco Island Florida just over 200 miles away (in a straight line) as seen in the attached photo.

This launch marks SpaceX 95th flight this year as they push for 100 launches in a calender year between all three of their Falcon 9 launch pads. The reason why this booster B-1058 is popular with space fans is because it first flew two astronauts to the ISS on Demo-2 a crew Dragon mission for NASA and SpaceX return to crewed flight from American soil on American rockets. Because of this past historic crewed mission it is the only Falcon 9 first stage booster to carry the now faded NASA worm logo on the side of it. There is hope that eventually this booster will be in a rocket garden at KSC possibly after the 20th flight just a guess on this writers part.

Weather forcast over the pad was at 60% to 70% favorable for launch with a concern for thick clouds and booster recovery weather. B-1058 landed on drone ship JRTI near the Bahamas and was barely visible from Marco Island briefly due to thick clouds. Starlink now has a reported 2.3 million users in over 70 countries per SpaceX. The Starlink constalation has over 5,100 working satellites in orbit and this launch just added antoher 23 second generation Starlink satellites into orbit.

According to SpaceX.com/launches the company is now at 291 Total Launches, 254 Total Landings and 226 Total Re-Flights of a Falcon 9 booster. This does not include test flights from Starbase Texas or the first four Falcon 1 test flights.

Photo and Summary by Scott Schilke for spacenewsfl.com