Four days after conducting a similar mission, another Falcon 9 rocket at Vandenberg Space Force Base carried additional Starlink satellites into orbit Sunday night, rumbling on its path away from the Central Coast. Liftoff of the two-stage rocket built by SpaceX occurred at 9:53 p.m. from Space Launch Complex-4. The first-stage booster returned to land on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship positioned in the Pacific Ocean. This marked the 20th launch and landing for the first-stage booster used for the mission. Landing the first-stage booster, the lower two-thirds of the rocket, means it can be reused again, helping to reduce the cost of getting satellites into space and the time between launches. Sign Up for the A.M. Report Keep up with Noozhawk's daily news coverage, delivered at 4:15 a.m. right to your inbox. Sign up This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. SpaceX also catches the two halves of the payload fairing, or nose cone, so they can be reused. Deployment of the 20 Starlink satellites, 13 of which were equipped with direct-to-cell capabilities, was set to take place approximately one hour after the rocket departed from Vandenberg. Ground controllers reported “nominal orbit insertion,” a promising sign for the mission’s success. The West Coast launch was the second of the day for SpaceX, with the first occurring from Florida. SpaceX has two more missions scheduled to occur from Florida and Texas through Tuesday. Tagged: