SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launched the NROL-97 mission from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A), at 0354 UTC on Friday (Oct. 2), carrying classified payload and marking the first time the heavy-lift vehicle has been used for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). This launch completed a historic "tripleheader" within 13 hours for SpaceX, following the earlier Crew-13 and Transporter-18 flights.

Falcon Heavy's two side boosters B1072 and B1104 came back to Earth for landing at Landing Zones 2 and 1 at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station about eight minutes after liftoff; while the rocket’s new center core, B1106 was intentionally expended to maximize energy for the classified payload.

The Falcon Heavy upper stage deployed the payload to a high-energy orbit likely intended for geostationary or highly elliptical paths, which require the Falcon Heavy’s superior lift capacity (63,800 kilograms to LEO) compared to the standard Falcon 9.

NROL-97 is the opening operational mission of the $13.7 billion NSSL Phase 3 Lane 2 contract, awarded in 2025, which formalizes SpaceX as a primary provider for U.S. national security launches through fiscal year 2029.

While specific details of the spy satellite remain classified, the use of the Falcon Heavy indicates a heavy or high-altitude payload that exceeded the capabilities of the NRO’s previous 22 Falcon 9 missions.

The NROL-97 mission patch features the phrase "Orbem mundi mutandum conservare," which is Latin for "to preserve a changing world" or "to preserve the world by transforming it." The emblem also memorializes the lives lost during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"The lighthouse characterizes enduring strength and the ability to provide information to those in need, even in difficult times," NRO officials wrote in a description of the patch. "The endpoints of the light beam align to the locations of 9 and 11 on a clock face in honor of the 25th anniversary of 9/11. Four prominent stars represent the four aircraft lost on 9/11, and the moon phase is shown as it appeared on September 11, 2026."

SpaceX has launched a "tripleheader" in such a short timeframe — in March 2025, when the company sent up three Falcon 9 rockets in a 12.5-hour span.

SpaceX Crew-13 mission's Crew Dragon Grace successfully docked to the forward-facing port of the International Space Station (ISS)'s Harmony module, at 2305 UTC on Thursday (Oct. 1), completing the fastest U.S. spaceflight to the station in history. Grace, launched from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 1510 UTC, reached the ISS in just 7 hours and 55 minutes, breaking the previous record by approximately five hours.

The previous record was 12 hours and 33 minutes, set in November 2024 by SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule during the robotic CRS-31 resupply flight. The fastest that astronauts had made the trip in a U.S. vehicle was 14 hours and 43 minutes, which was achieved by the Crew-11 mission in August 2025.

"We got lucky this time," Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science and Dragon programs at SpaceX, said during Crew-13's post-launch press conference today.

"The space station was in an opportune spot in space, and the orbital mechanics, the physics of it all, worked out for it to be the shortest launch-to-docking time we've had to date," she said, adding that "this is close to the fastest it could be."

Crew-13 didn't set the overall speed record to the ISS, however — not even close. In May 2020, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying three astronauts reached the orbiting lab just 3 hours and 3 minutes after lifting off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz caught up to the ISS after just two orbits of Earth.

The Soyuz isn't faster or more powerful than a cargo or crew-carrying Dragon capsule. Rather, the difference in chase-down times comes down primarily to choices made by mission controllers; Russia tends to target more aggressive "fast-track" trajectories.

Crew-13 mission crew consists of mission Commander and NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins, mission pilot and NASA astronaut Luke Delaney, mission pilot and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. They joined the Expedition 75 core crew and the departing SpaceX Crew-12 astronauts, temporarily raising the orbital station's population to 11.

Crew-13 astronauts' mission includes conducting scientific research on stem-cell derived tissues for Parkinson’s and heart disease, testing zero-g crop production, and performing routine station maintenance.

The new crew will relieve the four astronauts of Crew-12 mission, which launched in mid-February. NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, the ESA's Sophie Adenot and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, will return to Earth in their Crew Dragon capsule this month, according to NASA officials.

SpaceX Falcon 9 launched its Transporter-18 rideshare mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 1832 UTC on Thursday (Oct. 1), deploying 130 payloads into a sun-synchronous orbit. The mission’s primary payload was a prototype satellite for Google’s Project Suncatcher, designed to test the resilience of Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) against space radiation and thermal challenges.

About 8 minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9's first stage booster, B1082 came back to Vandenberg for a landing, completing its 25th flight to date. Meanwhile the rocket's upper stage powered its way to low Earth orbit (LEO), where it deployed the 130 payloads over a roughly 11-minute window starting about 54.5 minutes after liftoff, and bringing the total count for SpaceX’s Rideshare program to over 1,800 payloads.

The highest-profile payload on Transporter-18, is a pathfinder spacecraft for Project Suncatcher, the AI constellation that Google plans to build and operate in LEO, which explores scalable machine learning infrastructure.

This satellite will help the project team determine how TPUs — Google chips that are core Suncatcher hardware — perform in the space environment. Of particular importance are how the TPUs withstand space radiation, and how efficiently the heat they generate is dissipated.

Another company with AI data center ambitions flew on Transporter-18 as well: Cowboy Space put its Reason-1 satellite on the Falcon 9.

"Its job is to prove out power beaming: using a high-power laser to transfer energy from low Earth orbit to a receiver on the ground," Cowboy Space said of Reason-1 in a Sept. 28 X post. "If you want to build data centers in space, you have to master the optical systems between orbit and Earth. This is where that journey begins."

Transporter-18 also launched Starfish Space's first Otter servicing satellite.

"This is a big moment for Starfish Space," the Washington-based company said via X on Sept. 24. "We've spent years developing, iterating, and proving out the key technologies required for affordable, available satellite servicing. Now we’re launching Otters, putting our satellite servicing vehicles to work for customers in orbit."

The rest of the 130 payloads were a diverse lot, consisting of "cubesats, microsats, hosted payloads and two spacecraft with reentry vehicles and four orbital transfer vehicles carrying 41 of those payloads to be deployed at a later time," SpaceX wrote in its Transporter-18 mission description. The manifest included Carbon Mapper’s Tanager-2 satellites for methane monitoring, and spacecraft from Varda Space Industries featuring reentry vehicles.

Transporter-18 was part of a very busy day for SpaceX. The company also launched the Crew-13 astronaut mission for NASA earlier, and it aims to launch the NROL-97 flight for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office later.