SpaceX reaches milestone with 300th successful booster landing

Dec. 5 (UPI) -- SpaceX reached another milestone for the reusability of its first-stage boosters as it launched another round of Starlink satellites from California.

The Wednesday night launch marked the 300th time SpaceX successfully returned the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket in the company's history, something unheard of before the space company came into existence. Starlink Mission 9-14 left the Vandenberg Space Force Station Wednesday night.

About eight minutes later, the first stage landed safely on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean.

SpaceX said that 13 of the new satellites launched from California are capable of connecting directly to other satellites, creating the first shell of Starlink's specialized network.

"The first Starlink satellite direct-to-cell phone constellation is now complete," SpaceX founder Elon Musk said, according to Space.com early Thursday. "This will enable unmodified cellphones to have Internet connectivity in remote areas. Bandwidth per beam is only 100Mb, but future constellations will be much more capable."

SpaceX has launched more than 80 Starlink satellite missions this year, boosting the number of its satellites circling the globe to 6,799.