SpaceX Falcon Heavy aims to launch same day as Crew-13 next week on Space Coast

Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel on Sep 26, 2026

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ORLANDO, Fla. — SpaceX has not launched from Florida since mid-September, but is planning two big missions on the same day next week with the launches of Crew-13 to the International Space Station and the NROL-97 mission on the powerhouse Falcon Heavy.

With both missions targeting Oct.1 liftoffs, it would also mark a first for the Space Coast as the booster for Crew-13 will try and land back at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station launch site at Landing Zone 40 while the Falcon Heavy side boosters will aim for recoveries at Canaveral’s Landing Zones 1 and 2.

All three boosters’ returns mean that Central Florida could be in store for one or more sonic booms with their reentries coming about eight minutes after launch.

First up would be Crew-13 targeting liftoff at 11:10 a.m. from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 sending the Crew Dragon Grace making its second trip to space on a mission to bring four crew up to the space station.

The crew features NASA astronaut and commander Jessica Watkins, NASA astronaut and pilot, and Central Floridian, Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. Delaney, Kutryk and Teteryatnikov are all rookies while Watkins was a member of the Crew-4 mission in 2022.

The quartet who went into quarantine in Houston last week are slated to arrive to Kennedy Space Center on Saturday afternoon. They will be headed for a months-long stay joining Expedition 75 on board the station and relieving Crew-12, the members of which have been on board since February.

Delaney, 47, was raised in DeBary and attended DeLand and Deltona High School.

The booster for the mission is making its third trip to space.

Then just before midnight, SpaceX will shift gears to launch a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office on what would be only the 14th ever flight of Falcon Heavy, but the third this year.

The NROL-97 mission is targeting liftoff at 11:53 p.m. from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A with a backup falling to Oct. 2 at 11:48 p.m.

The two side boosters are flying for the second and fourth times having previously flown Falcon Heavy missions for GOES-U, Viasat-3 F3 and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. That last flight was less than a month ago lifting off from KSC on Aug. 30.

This will be the first NRO mission to fly on a Falcon Heavy with seven previous national security missions flown on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets.

The busy day for SpaceX comes when launches on the Space Coast have been dialed back as Elon Musk’s company focuses on getting ready its Starship and Super Heavy launch tower adjacent the Falcon Heavy launch pad.

Already SpaceX had limited its KSC pad use to only Falcon Heavy missions while shifting all Falcon 9 launches to Cape Canaveral. Then it announced it would stop flying its frequent Starlink missions from Florida, instead only flying Starlink missions on Falcon 9’s from California.

Future Starlink missions from Florida will wait on Starship, and SpaceX is still gunning to launch its in-development heavy lift rocket from KSC for the first time before the end of the year.

Before that, though, it has what would be the powerhouse rocket’s first orbital launch ever with a mission slated to fly from SpaceX’s Texas test site Starbase as soon as this Monday.

If it goes well, it could pave the way for that first Florida operational flight sooner than later.