Briefs · Frontier Science
Three Rockets in Seven Days From One Pad
Three rockets in seven days from one pad. The neighbours barely had time to notice the quiet between them.
SpaceX flew three Falcon 9s from Vandenberg’s Space Launch Complex 4 East in a single week: Starlink 17-38 on 8 August, Starlink 17-49 on 11 August, and the classified USSF-366 mission on 15 August. The third flight’s booster, B1088, was on its 18th trip to space and back.
The 15th was the showpiece. While USSF-366 lifted off from California, another Falcon 9 launched a Globalstar mission from Cape Canaveral 38.5 minutes earlier — the shortest gap between two orbital launches in history, beating a 65-minute record from 2024. B1088’s landing was the 650th Falcon booster recovery.
Conclusion: Vandenberg is not a launch site, but rather a timetable — and SpaceX has turned the timetable into a metronome.
Read the original at Vandenberg Space Force Base / SpaceX
Summary in our own words. The original belongs to its publisher.