SpaceX put three rockets in orbit on Thursday, sending four astronauts to the International Space Station in record time for an American spacecraft, a rideshare batch from California, and a classified spy-satellite payload from Florida.
The day started at 11:10 a.m. Eastern at Cape Canaveral. A Falcon 9 lifted NASA’s Crew-13 mission. The Dragon capsule, named Grace, docked at the station at 7:05 p.m., 7 hours and 55 minutes after liftoff. Space.com reported that NASA called it the fastest launch-to-docking by any U.S. spacecraft in the station’s history.
The crew is NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. They are scheduled to stay about six months and relieve the Crew-12 astronauts, who could come home as soon as Monday. Watkins is commanding the flight on her second trip to the station.
Falcon Heavy launches NROL-97 from pad 39A in Florida pic.twitter.com/LQxZZzTneI
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 2, 2026
The old American mark was 12 hours and 33 minutes, set in November 2024 by an uncrewed cargo Dragon. The fastest previous U.S. crew trip was 14 hours and 43 minutes, by Crew-11 in August 2025. SpaceX’s Julianna Scheiman said the station happened to be in the right place in its orbit, and that Thursday’s path was close to as fast as the physics allow. It is not the world record. A Russian Soyuz made the trip in 3 hours and 3 minutes in 2020.
A second Falcon 9 left Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 2:32 p.m. Eastern on the Transporter-18 rideshare. SpaceX said the flight carried 130 payloads, a mix of small satellites, hosted payloads and vehicles that will release more spacecraft later. That is not the same as 130 separate satellites.
The night launch was Falcon Heavy from pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX posted that the rocket lifted NROL-97, a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, the company’s first Heavy flight for the spy-satellite agency. The two side boosters landed back at Cape Canaveral. The Heavy’s center core was not part of the landing count.
Four boosters came back in one day: the Crew-13 booster, the California booster, and Falcon Heavy’s two side cores. No injuries were reported from the launches.
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