Launch tripleheader! SpaceX to fly 3 rockets in 13 hours today
Two Falcon 9s and a Falcon Heavy will lift off today (Oct. 1), if all goes to plan.
SpaceX has a very big day planned.
Elon Musk's company is scheduled to launch three missions in a 13-hour span today (Oct. 1), a feat it has accomplished just once before.
The action will start at 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 GMT) with the launch of the Crew-13 astronaut mission for NASA, which will head toward the International Space Station atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Next up is the Transporter-18 rideshare mission, which will send 130 payloads to orbit, including a prototype satellite for Google's Project Suncatcher AI constellation.
Transporter-18 will fly on a Falcon 9 from the West Coast, lifting off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base during a 58-minute window that opens at 2:18 p.m. EDT (1818 GMT; 11:18 a.m. local California time).
The action shifts back to Florida's Space Coast for the final leg of the tripleheader. If all goes to plan, a Falcon Heavy rocket will launch the classified NROL-97 mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office from NASA's Kennedy Space Center tonight at 11:53 p.m. EDT (0353 GMT on Oct. 2).
You can watch all of these launches live. Space.com will stream the Crew-13 launch, courtesy of NASA, and SpaceX will webcast Transporter-18 and NROL-97 on its website.
The only other time that SpaceX has launched three missions in such a short timeframe was March 14-15 of 2025, when three Falcon 9 rockets launched in a 12.5-hour span.
The first two rockets lofted the Crew-10 astronaut mission and the Transporter-13 rideshare flight. The final Falcon 9 sent 23 of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites to low Earth orbit.
Today's missions, by the way, come on the heels of the 14th test flight of SpaceX's Starship megarocket, which saw the vehicle reach Earth orbit for the first time ever. So the company is giving all of its active rockets a workout this week, if current schedules hold.
Michael Wall is the Spaceflight and Tech Editor for Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers human and robotic spaceflight, military space, and exoplanets, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.
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