SpaceX aces 3rd launch in 13 hours, sending 23 Starlink satellites to orbit (video)

SpaceX just pulled off a spaceflight tripleheader.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 of the company’s Starlink internet satellites, including 13 with direct-to-cell capability, lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today (March 15) at 7:35 a.m. EDT (1135 GMT).

It was SpaceX’s third launch in a 13-hour span, as the company noted via X this morning.

a black and white rocket launches into an early morning sky — A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 23 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on March 15, 2025. (Image credit: SpaceX)

The rocket flurry began at 7:03 p.m. EDT (2303 GMT) on Friday (March 14), when a Falcon 9 launched the Crew-10 astronaut mission toward the International Space Station from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, which is next door to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The four-person Crew-10 is on track to dock with the orbiting lab tonight around 11:30 p.m. EDT (0330 GMT on March 16); you can watch that rendezvous live here at Space.com.

Related: Watch SpaceX’s Crew-10 astronaut mission arrive at the ISS tonight

Then, early this morning, the company launched 74 payloads to orbit from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on a rideshare mission called Transporter 13. That flight featured a round-number milestone for SpaceX — the 400th landing to date of a Falcon 9 first stage.

There was also a successful touchdown on this morning’s Starlink launch, the 18th to date for this particular Falcon 9 booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.

Falcon 9 completes three missions in ~13 hours, launching four astronauts to the @space_station, 74 rideshare payloads to orbit, and adding 23 @Starlink satellites to the constellation pic.twitter.com/VgaUHu7kZXMarch 15, 2025

SpaceX has now launched 31 Falcon 9 missions in 2025. About two-thirds of them have been devoted to building out the Starlink network in low Earth orbit, by far the biggest satellite constellation ever assembled.

SpaceX has lofted nearly 8,100 Starlink spacecraft to date, 7,061 of which are operational today, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.

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