A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 70 different payloads lifts off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Florida on Monday, June 23, 2025. (Image credit: SpaceX) The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth today as planned, touching down on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" in the Pacific Ocean about 8.5 minutes after liftoff. It was the 26th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. That's close to the company's reusability record, which currently stands at 28 flights. The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, continued powering its way to low Earth orbit, where it has a lot of work to do: It will deploy the menagerie of payloads over a nearly two-hour span that begins roughly 54 minutes after launch. The first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stands vertically on the droneship "Of Course I Still Love You" in the Pacific Ocean on Monday, June 23, 2025. (Image credit: SpaceX) Those payloads include private Earth-observing satellites, such as Capella Space's Capella-17 synthetic aperture radar craft, and Starfish Space's Otter Pup 2, which will attempt to perform the first-ever commercial docking in LEO later this year. Get the Space.com Newsletter