SpaceX launched two Falcon 9 rockets from Florida about 3 hours and 36 minutes apart, deploying 58 Starlink satellites and achieving the fastest turnaround from the Space Coast. Both boosters landed on droneships east of The Bahamas, marking their 8th and 24th flights respectively. The pair of missions helped Kennedy and Cape Canaveral reach a record 98 launches this year. Industry leaders noted how booster recovery has moved from controversial to routine and predicted advances in second-stage reuse.
SpaceX Pulls Off Fastest Space Coast Doubleheader, Launches 58 More Starlink Satellites
SpaceX launched two Falcon 9 rockets from Florida about 3 hours and 36 minutes apart, deploying 58 Starlink satellites and achieving the fastest turnaround from the Space Coast. Both boosters landed on droneships east of The Bahamas, marking their 8th and 24th flights respectively. The pair of missions helped Kennedy and Cape Canaveral reach a record 98 launches this year. Industry leaders noted how booster recovery has moved from controversial to routine and predicted advances in second-stage reuse.
08:25 PM, 11/15/2025Technology
SpaceX completes quickest Florida doubleheader, deploying 58 Starlink sats
SpaceX launched two Falcon 9 rockets from Florida overnight, carrying a combined 58 Starlink internet satellites and recording the company's fastest turnaround from the Space Coast to date. The pair of missions lifted off from adjacent pads at Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 10:08 p.m. ET Friday and 1:44 a.m. ET Saturday — a span of 3 hours and 36 minutes.
The second launch had originally been scheduled just 48 minutes after the first but slipped by about 2 hours and 49 minutes. Despite the delay, the two launches still beat SpaceX's previous Florida doubleheader turnaround of 4 hours and 12 minutes from March 2023.
With these flights, Kennedy and Cape Canaveral have reached a record 98 missions this year, exceeding the prior total of 94.
Booster recoveries and reuse
Both first stages returning from the Florida launches landed on droneships in the Atlantic east of The Bahamas. The first Falcon 9 lifted off from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center; its booster touched down on the droneship "A Shortfall of Gravitas" about 8.5 minutes after liftoff, marking the booster’s eighth flight. The second Falcon 9 launched from Cape Canaveral's Pad 40 and its first stage landed on the droneship "Read the Instructions" roughly 8.5 minutes after liftoff — the 24th mission for that booster, a tally that includes Crew-6.
SpaceX refurbishes first stages at Hangar X.
"It was less than 10 years ago when the idea of recovering a 1st stage was extremely controversial," Stoke Space CEO and co-founder Andy Lapsa wrote on X. "Now it's absurd to even consider anything else." He added that skepticism around second-stage reuse remains, but predicted that second-stage reuse will soon become routine.
Context and related activity
While this is SpaceX's quickest doubleheader from Florida, it is not the company's fastest overall. On Aug. 31, 2024, two Falcon 9 missions launched just 65 minutes apart, with one liftoff from Cape Canaveral and the other from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The recent Florida doubleheader is part of a long history of rapid back-to-back launches from the state: in 1966 NASA launched Gemini 11 and its Agena target vehicle just 1 hour and 37 minutes apart to practice rendezvous and docking maneuvers.
The weekend also followed another Cape Canaveral doubleheader that included Blue Origin's New Glenn deploying NASA's Mars-bound ESCAPADE spacecraft and a United Launch Alliance Atlas V launching a Viasat communications satellite, launches that were about 6 hours and 9 minutes apart.
With these two recent Falcon 9 flights, there are now more than 8,900 operational Starlink satellites in orbit.
The next Florida mission is scheduled for Tuesday, with a launch window from 6:29 p.m. to 10:29 p.m. ET from Cape Canaveral's Pad 40.