{"id":265420,"date":"2025-11-16T03:54:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T03:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/265420\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T03:54:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T03:54:08","slug":"record-doubleheader-spacex-launches-2-falcon-9-rockets-from-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/265420\/","title":{"rendered":"Record doubleheader: SpaceX launches 2 Falcon 9 rockets from Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nov. 15 (UPI) &#8212; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.upi.com\/topic\/SpaceX\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"SpaceX\" class=\"tpstyle\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">SpaceX<\/a> launched two rockets with a total of 58 Starlink Internet satellites about 3 1\/2 hours apart overnight Saturday in the private company&#8217;s quickest turnaround from Florida&#8217;s Space Coast.<\/p>\n<p>In all, there have been a record 98 missions this year from the adjacent Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The record of 94 was broken on Monday.\n<\/p>\n<p>Originally, there was supposed to be a 48-minute turnaround but the second launch was delayed by 2 hours and 49 minutes.\n<\/p>\n<p>The two launches at 10:08 p.m. EST Friday and 1:44 a.m. Saturday &#8212; split by three hours and 36 minutes &#8212; beat the doubleheader turnaround of 4 hours and 12 minutes by SpaceX in March 2023. The launches were under clear skies, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.floridatoday.com\/story\/tech\/science\/space\/2025\/11\/15\/spacex-launch-doubleheader-kicks-off-weekend-with-two-starlink-missions-from-cape-canaveral-florida\/87282478007\/?gnt-cfr=1&amp;gca-cat=p&amp;gca-uir=true&amp;gca-epti=z116448p115750c115750d00----v116448b0064xxd006465&amp;gca-ft=69&amp;gca-ds=sophi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Florida Today reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In 1966, NASA launched two spacecraft 1 hour and 37 minutes apart in Florida with Gemini 11 crew and its Agena target vehicle, which was used to practice orbital space rendezvous and docking techniques.<\/p>\n<p>It is not the quickest doubleheader by SpaceX but the other one <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/space-exploration\/launches-spacecraft\/spacex-launches-2-rockets-less-than-4-hours-apart-from-floridas-space-coast\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">occurred in different states<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>On Aug. 31, 2024, two Falcon 9 missions were just 65 minutes apart. One flew from Cape Canaveral and the other lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.<\/p>\n<p>Both first stages in Florida landed on droneships in the Atlantic east of The Bahamas.\n<\/p>\n<p>The first Falcon 9 lifted off from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. The Falcon 9&#8217;s first stage landed in the Atlantic Ocean on drone ship &#8220;A Shortfall of Gravitas&#8221; about 8.5 minutes after liftoff. It was the eighth mission for the first stage.<\/p>\n<p>The second Falcon 9 went off from Cape Canaveral&#8217;s Pad 40. About 8 1\/2 minutes later, the first stage landed on the drone ship &#8220;Read the Instructions&#8221; and was the 24th mission, including Crew-6.\n<\/p>\n<p>The first-stage rockets are refurbished at Hangar X.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was less than 10 years ago when the idea of recovering a 1st stage was extremely controversial,&#8221; Stoke Space CEO and co-founder Andy Lapsa said in a <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/AndyLapsa\/status\/1989175880653107354\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">post on X<\/a>. &#8220;Now it&#8217;s absurd to even consider anything else.\n<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Today, the same skepticism surrounds 2nd stage reuse, but it won&#8217;t be long until that, too, is archaic.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He shared video footage of Blue Origin&#8217;s New Glenn booster landing Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>The New Glenn launch was part of a doubleheader at Cape Canaveral, which were 6 hours and 9 minutes apart.<\/p>\n<p>The New Glenn rocket deployed NASA&#8217;s Mars-bound ESCAPADE spacecraft into low-Earth orbit at 3:55 p.m. Then at 10:04 p.m., United Launch Alliance sent up an Atlas V rocket, deploying a Viasat communications satellite.<\/p>\n<p>With the two launches, there are now<a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/spacex-starlink-satellites.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"> more<\/a> than 8,900 operational Starlink satellites.<\/p>\n<p>The next mission from Florida is scheduled for Tuesday with a launch window of 6:29 p.m. to 10:29 p.m. from Cape Canaveral&#8217;s Pad 40.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nov. 15 (UPI) &#8212; SpaceX launched two rockets with a total of 58 Starlink Internet satellites about 3&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,412,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-265420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-spacex","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}