• Shortest turnaround between two Falcon 9 launches from different pads: 1 hour, 5 minutes (August 31, 2024)
• Shortest time with three Falcon 9 launches: 20 hours, 3 minutes (March 4, 2024 and November 17–18, 2024)
• Shortest turnaround between launches from the same pad: 2 days, 15 hours, 53 minutes (November 11–14, 2024)
• Shortest turnaround of a drone ship between landings: 3 days, 12 hours, 13 minutes (May 28–June 1, 2024)
• Shortest turnaround of the same Falcon 9 booster: 13 days, 12 hours, 34 minutes (November 11–25, 2024)
None of these records are flukes. SpaceX has launched Falcon 9 rockets less than two hours apart on two occasions, and within a handful of hours several more times. Falcon 9 rockets have routinely launched from SpaceX’s busiest launch pad—Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida—as little as three or four days apart.
When SpaceX landed twice on the same drone ship in three-and-a-half days last year, the company’s vice president of launch, Kiko Dontchev, congratulated his team on X. The drone ship “traveled roughly 640 nautical miles in that time with only 3.5 hrs at the dock to drop off a rocket,” he wrote.
At the beginning of last year, Dontchev posted on X that SpaceX rolled a rocket out of the hangar and launched it six-and-a-half hours later. At the time, that was the fastest rollout to launch, but we haven’t had accurate rollout times for all missions since then. During the rollout, the rocket rides on a strongback transporter along rail tracks from the hangar to the launch pad, where it pivots vertically in preparation for the countdown to liftoff. On some missions, SpaceX has raised a rocket vertically in as little as four hours before launch for final checkouts and fueling.
A match made for the heavens
All of these statistics are remarkable, considering some rockets (such as the now-retired Delta IV Heavy from United Launch Alliance) have spent a year or more on the launch pad preparing for liftoff. The shortest span between two flights of ULA’s expendable workhorse rocket, the Atlas V, from different pads was six days in 2015. SpaceX’s fleet-leading booster, with 25 flights, has launched more times since its debut in June 2021 than all of ULA’s missions in the same time period.
