A new set of Starlink satellites rose away from Vandenberg Space Force Base aboard a Falcon 9 rocket early Thursday morning, with its loud departure startling unsuspecting humans and pets.

Liftoff of the SpaceX rocket occurred at 12:19 a.m. from Space Launch Complex-4 on South Base creating a loud and lengthy rumble heard in north Santa Maria and others areas of the Central Coast.

Approximately 8 minutes later, the Falcon’s first-stage booster successfully touched down on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean. 

Recovery of the first-stage booster allows SpaceX to recycle a key component, trimming costs for launches and cutting the time between missions. 

Thursday marked the fourth flight for the first-stage booster, which also carried two other batches of Starlink satellites plus U.S. Space Force satellites.

The firm also recycles the two parts of the payload fairing, or nose cone, for reuse. 

The Falcon 9 rocket carried 47 Starlink satellites as the SpaceX continues to expand its constellation to provide internet access anywhere on the planet include areas where land-based service remain unavailable or unreliable. 

Deployment of the 47 satellites occurred nearly 19 minutes after the launch, according to SpaceX. 

The firm’s launch rate has spiked at Vandenberg and in Florida thanks in part of Starlink, envisioned to have as many as 30,000 satellites.

With Thursday’s mission from the West Coast, more than 4,600 satellites have launched for the Starlink system, according to the detailed online tally kept by Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

More than 4,200 were in orbit before Thursday’s launch after some satellites failed for a variety of reasons. 

Vandenberg’s launch was one of two for Starlink this week, with another planned for Friday morning from Florida. 

This was the 13th Falcon 9 rocket launch from Vandenberg in 2023.