It has nothing to do with the Crew-11 return, the number of flights on one booster, or the number of launches in the year (it's a new year - last year's 165 launches probably won't be a target until the fourth quarter of the year). No, this one is setting a new record for the speed of turning around a launch pad, between Monday's and Today's Starlink missions from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40 or "slick 40").
SpaceX’s launch of its Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday afternoon broke the turnaround record at its launchpad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station by more than five hours.
The Starlink 6-98 mission lifted off at 1:08 p.m. EST (1808 UTC), just 45 hours after the launch of the Starlink 6-97 mission at 4:08 p.m. EST (2108 UTC) on Monday.
The previous record, set in December 2025, was 50 hours and 44 between the launches of NROL-77 and Starlink 6-90.
We've met Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX Vice President of Launch before, a guy with an interesting job. He wrote on social media that, “The rocket was actually ready to fly at roughly 40 hours, but we needed to wait for the optimal deployment t-zero. Love seeing us continue to improve on our speed, efficiency, safety and reliability!” Dontchev went on to summarize something we constantly see about SpaceX: “We once thought it was crazy town to launch from the same pad in two days. Now it feels crazy not to be launching from the same pad multiple times a day. Physics is the only constraint. Everything else is just an engineering challenge waiting to be solved.”
That comparison from thinking it was "crazy town to launch in two days" to not launching multiple times a day is this week's version of my old observation that, "remember when we used to wonder if they could make 10 launches on the same booster?" Now the Fleet Leader, B1067, is at 32 flights and they're going for 40. A Falcon 9 booster with the one-time crazy goal of 10 launches is now considered "like new". Today's booster, B1085, was on its 13th flight.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to begin the Starlink 6-98 mission on Jan. 14, 2026. The flight, which lifted off at 1:08 p.m. EST (1808 UTC) marked the fastest turnaround of SLC-40 to date with liftoff occurring just 45 hours after the launch of Starlink 6-97 on Jan. 12. This broke the previous record by more than five hours. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now
It's not really visible in that photo, but my only issue with the launch was that our cloud cover was too thick to get a glimpse of the vehicle and the cold front overhead kept us from hearing the launch rumble.
At 0215 UTC on January 15th, the Crew-11 Dragon is safely in orbit and heading toward its early morning deorbit burn.
We are still a far cry from Jupiter 2 technology (Lost in Space). We almost have the robot.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the turnaround time for the pad is, from 'Launched' to 'Ready for the next Rocket'?
ReplyDeleteNow I wonder what all the other statistics are?
Quickest refurbishment of a booster, both from time from landing to ready and from intake into processing facility to ready?
Turnaround time for refurbishment of Dragon from landing to ready and intake to ready?
I've found some numbers for time between flights, and find, "The fastest Falcon 9 turnaround time is currently 9 days, achieved by booster B1088 between its missions for the SPHEREx and NROL-57 launches in March 2025." That is from landing to launch pad ready to launch.
DeleteWikipedia has several pages showing every flight of every booster they could find out about, and I saw several in the range of 2 to 3 weeks.
I haven't found numbers on Dragon refurbishment but maybe asking the wrong questions. On a mission to the ISS that lasts six months, the Dragon stays on the docking port for the entire duration of the mission and when it returns to the ground, there's generally not another mission waiting for a capsule. Especially now that Jared Isaacman won't be chartering a Dragon for another space walk or to fly over the poles like Fram 2 any time soon.