Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket streaks into the sky over Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission Sunday night to deploy 22 more Starlink internet satellites. (credit: SpaceX )

The late-night liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket with another batch of Starlink Internet satellites on Sunday set a new record for the most flights by a SpaceX launch vehicle, with a first-stage booster flying for a 16th time. SpaceX now aims to fly its reusable Falcon 9 boosters as many as 20 times, double the company’s original goal.

The flight followed several months of inspections and refurbishment of SpaceX’s most-flown rocket, a process that included a “recertification” of the booster to prove, at least on paper, that it could fly as many as five more times after completing its 15th launch and landing last December.

Sunday night’s mission got the booster’s extended life off to a good start.

Enlarge / The Centaur V upper stage for the first Vulcan test flight was originally lifted atop its booster at Cape Canaveral in February. (credit: United Launch Alliance )

United Launch Alliance technicians at Cape Canaveral, Florida, have partially disassembled the first Vulcan rocket to send the launch vehicle’s upper stage back to its factory for reinforcements to its paper-thin steel fuel tank.

A test article for the Vulcan rocket’s Centaur V upper stage exploded on March 29 during a structural test at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. After a nearly three-month investigation, ULA engineers determined the upper stage already mounted to the first flight-rated Vulcan rocket inside a hangar in Florida needs more work.

ULA hasn’t ruled out launching the company’s first new Vulcan rocket by the end of the year, but the recovery from the test stand explosion in March eliminated any chance of getting Vulcan off the ground this summer. This also means the Vulcan rocket won’t become operational for the US military until some time next year, following two “certification” flights to demonstrate the vehicle’s performance and reliability.

Enlarge / United Launch Alliance moves its Atlas V booster into the Vertical Integration Facility adjacent to Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Monday, August 26. (credit: United Launch Alliance)

Hurricane Ian cut a devastating swath across Florida this week, and its core passed directly over Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral on Thursday.

However, by then, Ian had weakened to become a moderately strong tropical storm, with the bulk of its heaviest rainfall to the north of the launchpads along the Atlantic coast. As a result, damage to NASA's launch facilities at Kennedy Space Center, and the Space Force launchpads at Cape Canaveral, was minimal.

Accordingly, by Friday, work was already underway at facilities along Florida's "Space Coast" for a rapid-fire succession of three launches in three days.