SpaceX launches all the vehicles

Quite the four days for SpaceX not only did they launch the first orbital flight of Starship, which for most companies and space agencies would have been have been a wildly successful week, but they had a triple header of launches all within thirteen hours on Thursday October 1st. First up was Crew 13 which sent another crew rotation to the International Space Station and expedition 75! Crew Dragon Grace ferried the NASA and Canadian Astronauts and a Russian Cosmonaut to the space station on her second trip to space. After a picture perfect launch Booster B1101 landed at Landing zone 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. There was a very quick rendezvous with the space station, according to NASA, soft  capture occurring at 7:05 PM EDT, just under 8 hours after launch an American spaceflight record. 

Next up was the Transport 18 mission, a rideshare for small satellites to Sun Synchronous Orbit from Vandenburg Space Force Base and Space Launch Complex 4E in California. There were 130 spacecraft on board of the Falcon 9 and it lifted off on time at 11:32 PDT and after a picture perfect launch booster 1082 landed at landing zone 4E to mark the second successful launch and booster landing of the day. While on orbit the second stage deployed the 130 spacecraft for a myriad of companies. 

For the final show of the day, there was a plan to launch a Falcon Heavy from historic Pad 39A on Kennedy Space Center. It lifted off despite some low hanging clouds at 11:53 EDT with the NROL-97 payload on board to a high energy orbit and on a similar trajectory as the Crew 13 mission, hugging the US Eastern Seaboard with the launch visible all the way to South Carolina. The triple core rocket successfully inserted the payload into orbit and the side boosters 1072 and 1104 landed at Landing Zone 1 and 2 making it four for four in booster launches and recoveries for an all gas and no brakes day for SpaceX and the Falcon family of rockets. 

This is a day we may never see again as Starship ramps up across Texas and Florida it will create less of a need for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. While the heyday of Falcon 9 launches from Florida is on the downhill slide as they are drawing down the commercial and Starlink needs for the Falcon family. This was a day for the ages and the Falcon palooza was one that should not have been missed by the spaceflight community. Between Starship's first orbital and operational flight on September 28th and the three Falcon vehicles along with Crew Dragon on October 1st, every vehicle in the SpaceX family has flown over the course of four days. This week has been excitement guaranteed and realized.