Back to Back to Back Launches by SpaceX
Three Falcon 9 Rockets Head to Space from Florida, California
SpaceX conducted back-to-back launches from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in a 24-hour period, with a third lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
On Friday, March 14 at 7:03 p.m. ET, Falcon 9 launched Dragon’s tenth operational human spaceflight mission (Crew-10) to the International Space Station from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage landed on Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Dragon will autonomously dock with the space station on tonight at approximately 11:30 p.m. ET.
During their time on the orbiting laboratory, the crew will conduct new research to prepare for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and to benefit humanity on Earth.
Then, this morning at 7:35 a.m. ET, Falcon 9 launched 23 Starlink satellites, including 13 with Direct to Cell capabilities, to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
This was the 18th flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched Crew-6, SES O3b mPOWER-B, USSF-124, Bluebird 1-5, and now 14 Starlink missions.
While launching two rockets in 12 hours is impressive, it is not the shortest time between launches for the company. About a year ago, in March 2024, SpaceX launched two Falcon 9 rockets from Cape Canaveral less than 4 hours apart. The first carried the Eutelsat 36D satellite into orbit, while the second launched 23 Starlink satellites just 3 hours and 22 minutes later.
Meanwhile, on the west coast, SpaceX launched the Transporter-13 mission to orbit from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Friday at 11:43 pm PDT (2:43 am EDT).
This was the 13th flight of the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched Crew-7, CRS-29, PACE, Transporter-10, EarthCARE, NROL-186, and six Starlink missions.
Transporter-13 is a dedicated smallsat rideshare mission. There were 74 payloads on this flight, including cubesats, microsats, hosted payloads, a re-entry capsule, and an orbital transfer vehicle carrying 11 of those payloads to be deployed at a later time. To date, SpaceX has launched more than 1,200 payloads to orbit for 130+ customers across our entire Rideshare program.