SpaceX successfully launched a powerful ocean-mapping satellite from California early Monday morning, achieving a major operational milestone. The Sentinel-6B spacecraft lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 12:21 a.m. ET on November 17. This flight marks the company’s 500th orbital mission utilizing a previously flown rocket.
Falcon 9 lands at LZ-4, marking the 500th overall reflight of a flight-proven orbital class rocket pic.twitter.com/irwghYWdqU
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 17, 2025
During the agency’s live webcast, NASA spokesman Derrol Nail noted that the mission sees “Sentinel-6B rising, extending nearly four decades of the precise sea-level record from space.” The use of the reusable Falcon 9 architecture has been central to SpaceX’s ability to increase launch cadence and reduce costs.
Beyond the immediate mission, reports indicate that SpaceX is looking toward a future involving orbital data centers. This follows comments made last month by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who predicted that large-scale data centers would be constructed in orbit within the next 10 to 20 years to leverage solar energy and efficient cooling. In response to the growing demand for processing power driven by artificial intelligence, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has indicated that the company’s upcoming Starlink V3 satellites could serve as a massive data center in space.
According to official statements from SpaceX, these V3 satellites are being optimized to launch aboard the company’s Starship vehicle. The company plans for each V3 unit to add 60 Tbps of capacity to the Starlink network, representing a more than 20-fold increase compared to the capacity provided by the V2 Mini satellites currently launched via Falcon 9. Specifically, each V3 satellite will feature a downlink speed of 1 Tbps and an uplink capacity of 160 Gbps. This equates to a 10-fold increase in downlink and a 24-fold increase in uplink capabilities over the V2 Mini.
The company further details that the V3 system will possess approximately 4 Tbps of combined RF and inter-satellite link capacity, utilizing next-generation hardware. By employing high-speed laser infrastructure to establish connections between units, these satellites are expected to form a large-scale network that could function as a data center utilized by multiple entities.
