SpaceX's Falcon9 rocket aces 3 launches to space under 20 hours

SpaceX’s Falcon-9 rocket has successfully aced three major launches -- all under a span of 20 hours, the company said on Tuesday.

Billionaire Elon Musk’s company first sent a four-member crew to the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday morning. During the afternoon, it launched 53 satellites on Transporter-10 rideshare flight, and 23 Starlink satellites took off to orbit early Tuesday morning.

“Three Falcon 9 launches in 20 hours, carrying to orbit: 4 crewmembers headed to the @Space_Station; 53 rideshare spacecraft; 23 @Starlink satellites,” the company wrote in a post on X on Tuesday.

SpaceX, which is part of the astronaut launch services for NASA from 2020, carried the crew-8 mission to ISS at 10:53 p.m. EST Sunday (9.23 am, Monday IST) from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Crew-8 mission includes NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin. This will be the first space flight for Epps, Dominick and Grebyonkin and the third stint on the ISS for Barratt.

SpaceX's Transporter-10 mission lifted off at 5:05 p.m. ET on Monday (3:35 am Tuesday, IST) from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The mission includes 53 payloads, which were placed into various orbits including True Anomaly's Jackal spacecraft, a wide range of cubesats and nanosats, and the Aires satellite built by spacecraft-manufacturer Apex.

The company’s latest batch of 23 Starlink internet satellites lifted off at 6:56 p.m. ET on Monday (5:26 am Tuesday, IST) from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

SpaceX currently has over 5,000 working Starlink satellites in orbit, and it has approval to launch up to 12,000.