Moonshots, Rocket Records & Cosmic Cat Videos: Epic Space News Roundup (Aug 29–30, 2025)
SpaceX’s Record-Breaking Launches: SpaceX achieved back-to-back historic feats with its workhorse Falcon 9. In the pre-dawn hours of Aug. 28, a Falcon 9 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center carrying 28 Starlink satellites – notably, it was the 30th launch and landing of booster B1067, setting a new rocket reuse record space.com space.com. About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, the veteran first stage nailed its landing on the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas, making it “the first orbital-class rocket to successfully launch and land 30 times,” SpaceX announced space.com space.com. Just a day earlier, another Falcon 9 mission notched SpaceX’s 400th drone-ship landing to date, underscoring the company’s unprecedented launch cadence spaceflightnow.com spaceflightnow.com. SpaceX has already completed 106 orbital launches in 2025 and is on pace for around 170 this year spaceflightnow.com spaceflightnow.com – a tempo that highlights how routine orbital access is becoming. These Starlink deployments also swelled the constellation to over 8,200 active satellites in orbit spaceflightnow.com spaceflightnow.com, by far the largest ever assembled.