SpaceX launch and land Falcon 9 in third orbital mission within 36 hours; WATCH

SpaceX, on December 18, aced another orbital mission making it the third successful one within 36 hours. The Elon Musk-led firm launched the Falcon 9 for the third mission at 3:02 am IST from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre with 54 new Starlink satellites. About nine minutes later, the first stage booster of Falcon 9 landed on SpaceX’s droneship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean setting a new reusability record. 

The booster for this particular Falcon 9 has now flown for a record-setting 15th time with ten Starlink mission under its name. The same booster was also used for the historic Demo-2 mission which was SpaceX's maiden crewed flight with astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley who launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on May 30, 2020. According to SpaceX, the booster has also supported ANASIS-II, CRS-21, Transporter-1, and Transporter-3. 

Prior to this, SpaceX launched NASA's Surface, Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite on December 16 from the Vanderberg Space Force Station in California at 5:16 pm IST. The Falcon 9 booster used for SWOT mission flew on its sixth flight as it previously supported the NROL-87, NROL-85, SARah-1 and two Starlink missions. This was followed by two satellites for the telecom company SES from the Space Launch Complex 40 at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 4:18 IST which marked its successful 200th orbital mission.

Following the completion of the mission series, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk congratulated his team for the success. "Congrats to SpaceX Team on 3 perfect orbital launches within 36 hours!!! (sic)", he tweeted. 

Four previous flights have already been launched to the International Space Station for NASA — two crewed and two uncrewed, according to SpaceX's description of the liftoff. The aerospace firm also launched the private Japanese Hakuto-R moon lander on Sunday, December 11 ahead of the SWOT water-monitoring satellite for NASA.