SpaceX launches 27 Starlink satellites into polar shell for Arctic coverage

SpaceX launched 27 Starlink Group 15-18 satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base’s Space Launch Complex 4 East at 04:04:34 UTC on Oct. 31, 2026, the 18th mission in the Group 15 series.

The shell flies at 570 to 574 kilometers altitude and reaches 70 degrees north and south, serving Alaska’s North Slope, Greenland’s coastal settlements, Iceland, Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, northern Finland and Sweden, and Canada’s Northwest Territories. Group 15 is often the only broadband option for Arctic communities, while Group 6 shells at 53 to 55 degrees grow thin above roughly 55 to 60 degrees north.

Vandenberg, at 34.74 degrees north in Santa Barbara County, launches southward over the open Pacific, which opens inclinations from 70 degrees up to sun-synchronous orbits near 97 to 98 degrees. U.S. range safety rules block a southward Cape Canaveral path over the Caribbean and populated South America, so SpaceX uses Vandenberg for Group 15 polar flights because of the constraint, not preference.

Falcon 9 booster B1093 touched down on Of Course I Still Love You after flying 18 times, the vessel’s 231st landing and the 675th Falcon booster landing overall. B1093’s past flights include Transporter-16, two Space Development Agency missions, and 14 Starlink batches, and the booster is going to Port Hueneme to be inspected and serviced before flying again.

Separation from the upper stage happens at roughly 300 kilometers altitude. The satellites then use krypton-fueled Hall-effect thrusters — electric propulsion that ionizes propellant — producing thrust in tens to hundreds of millinewtons, so the climb to 570 to 574 kilometers is a month-long slow spiral. Hall thrusters reach 1,500 to 3,000 seconds of specific impulse against roughly 450 seconds for the best chemical engines.

More than 11,190 Starlink satellites were in orbit in late October 2026, about 65 percent of all active spacecraft tracked in Earth orbit and history’s largest satellite constellation. Since May 2019 the company has launched more than 13,069 Starlink satellites in total, including more than 2,000 during the first eight months of 2026, per financial analysis by SmallSatNews.

A July 9, 2026 test at Utqiagvik showed 10 Gbps of symmetric throughput in the town of about 5,000 people, some 320 miles north of the Arctic Circle and off the continental road network. Alaska telecom GCI is putting bonded gateway gear in Bethel, Sitka, Kotzebue, and Dillingham to link Starlink antennas as middle-mile connections. The U.S. Census Bureau puts Alaska’s population at roughly 740,000 residents in settlements with limited or absent terrestrial broadband.

Adding Group 15 satellites boosts capacity and throughput consistency for current Arctic users, since more satellites mean more passes over any high-latitude point and higher throughput there. The goal is to thicken the Arctic band and improve throughput there, mainly for high-latitude users rather than mid-latitude ones.

Slips pushed the date from Oct. 28 through Oct. 29 and Oct. 30 to Oct. 31, with no technical anomaly publicly reported by SpaceX behind the delays. Single-day slips are standard practice for Falcon 9 because narrow daily windows call for day-of refinements involving weather, airspace, or range scheduling.

It marked the 700th Falcon 9 launch overall and SpaceX’s 11th and final orbital flight of October 2026. The launch rate dropped below 150 orbital flights for the first time since July 2025 with the Oct. 27 Starlink 15-16 mission; the peak was 171 orbital launches in a 365-day span reached in December 2025.

The lower cadence reflects SpaceX’s shift to Starship, with regular orbital Starship missions expected to start in 2027. Elon Musk said on the third-quarter earnings call: “The rate at which we launch Starship will increase dramatically as we solve rapid and complete reusability.”

Group 15-15 flew Oct. 20 and Group 15-16 flew Oct. 27, with Group 15-21 tentatively set for November 2026 with B1103 listed for its seventh flight. SpaceX stopped flying Starlink missions from Florida on Falcon 9 in August 2026, yet Falcon 9 flights have left Florida since then, including NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13, CRS-35, and Bandwagon-5.