On the morning of February 13, 2026, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 5:15 a.m. EST, carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station. The launch was routine by most measures — clean ignition, clean staging, clean separation. The first stage booster returned to a landing pad at Cape Canaveral less than nine minutes after liftoff. The Dragon capsule continued toward orbit on a 34-hour journey to the ISS.
What made the mission anything but routine was the context around it. Crew-12 launched less than a month after its predecessor, Crew-11, had to leave the station early due to a medical evacuation. The ISS had been operating with just three crew members — well below NASA's preferred complement of seven — since mid-January. SpaceX had also just returned its Falcon 9 rocket from a brief stand-down following a second-stage anomaly on February 2. And yet by the time Crew-12 lifted off, SpaceX had already logged 16 Falcon 9 launches in 2026.
This is what spaceflight as infrastructure looks like.
A Second-Stage Issue, a Brief Pause, and a Fast Return
On February 2, during the Starlink 17-32 mission, SpaceX's Falcon 9 second stage experienced an off-nominal condition. According to SpaceX, a gas bubble in the transfer tube caused a failed ignition on the planned deorbit burn. The upper stage performed as designed to passivate itself safely, and it reentered Earth's atmosphere approximately 10.5 hours later over the Southern Indian Ocean. No satellites were lost — they were already deployed — but the incident was enough to trigger a voluntary stand-down while the company investigated.
The stand-down lasted less than a week. SpaceX returned to flight on February 7 with the Starlink 17-33 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base, using booster B1088 on its 13th flight. NASA reviewed the findings as part of Crew-12's Flight Readiness Review and determined, in a public statement, that because Crew Dragon flies a different deorbit profile than the Starlink missions, there was no increased risk to crew safety. Crew-12 was cleared to proceed.
The speed of that return — both the investigation and the return-to-flight — reflects how well SpaceX understands its own hardware after 609 Falcon family launches, 606 of which were full mission successes.
Twelve Starlink Missions, Sixteen Total Launches
The February 11 Starlink 17-34 mission from Vandenberg was SpaceX's 12th Starlink launch of 2026 and its 16th Falcon family launch overall through that date. Liftoff occurred at 9:11 a.m. PST from Space Launch Complex 4 East. The rocket carried 24 Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites on a southerly trajectory. Booster B1100, on its third flight, completed the mission with a landing on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean.
To put the pace in context: SpaceX completed 13 Falcon 9 launches in January alone. On January 14, a Starlink mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral just 45 hours after the previous launch from the same pad — breaking the company's own pad turnaround record at SLC-40 by more than five hours.
January 29 marked the launch of SpaceX's 11,000th Starlink satellite. By the time of the February 11 mission, there were more than 9,600 active Starlink satellites in orbit, according to tracking data maintained by astronomer Jonathan McDowell. SpaceX also used the occasion of its January 30 launch to publicly unveil Stargaze, a new Space Situational Awareness platform the company says it will make available free of charge to all satellite operators. Stargaze analyzes possible satellite conjunctions in minutes rather than the several hours required by current industry standards.
Crew-12: Four Astronauts, an Urgent Mission, and One Cosmonaut Controversy
Crew-12's crew list went through significant changes before launch. In December 2025, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev was abruptly removed from the mission. Roscosmos cited a transition to "other work." Investigative news outlet The Insider reported a different account: that Artemyev had been expelled from the United States after allegedly photographing SpaceX engines, documents, and other technologies in violation of International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Neither SpaceX nor NASA commented on those reports publicly. Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev was assigned to fill the seat.
The final crew that launched February 13 consisted of NASA astronaut Jessica Meir as commander, NASA astronaut Jack Hathaway as pilot, ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot as mission specialist, and Fedyaev as mission specialist.
Meir, who previously lived aboard the ISS from 2019 to 2020, is perhaps best known for conducting the first all-female spacewalk alongside NASA astronaut Christina Koch in October 2019. Hathaway and Adenot are both first-time flyers. Adenot's assignment carries the ESA mission name Epsilon. ESA's Human Exploration Group Leader Andreas Mogensen noted that Adenot will be the first ISS crew member to use the Enhanced Exploration Exercise Device — a combination rowing, cycling, and strength training system — after it is installed on the station.
The Crew-12 launch had originally been scheduled for February 15 before Crew-11's early return created urgency. Weather forced delays on February 12 and a revised target of February 13, where conditions forecast a 90% chance of acceptable weather at launch time. The crew launched successfully at 5:15 a.m. EST and is expected to dock with the station's Harmony module at 3:15 p.m. EST on Saturday, February 14.
Crew-12 is NASA's 12th crew rotation mission under the Commercial Crew Program, and the 13th crewed Dragon mission to the station overall. The crew will spend approximately eight months aboard the ISS conducting research including ultrasound blood vessel scans to investigate circulatory changes in microgravity, pharmaceutical research related to pneumonia-causing bacteria, and a simulated lunar landing exercise designed to assess how abrupt gravity shifts affect human cognition.
What SpaceX's Pace Actually Means
The operational tempo SpaceX is maintaining in early 2026 would have been remarkable by any prior measure of the space industry. In 2024, SpaceX conducted 134 Falcon family launches — breaking the global single-year record it had set the year before with 96. Through February 11 of this year, the company had already completed 16 launches in six weeks.
The Falcon 9's reusability is the core of this cadence. Individual boosters now routinely fly 15 or more missions. The booster that flew the January 12 Starlink mission, tail number B1078, was on one of its most-flown flights. B1067 is targeting its 33rd flight in the coming weeks. Each reuse meaningfully reduces the cost per launch compared to expendable rockets, and the high flight rate generates data that improves reliability over time. The Falcon 9 Block 5 has now flown 541 times successfully against a single failure, a 99.82% success rate.
Starlink itself has evolved well beyond its origins as a consumer broadband alternative for rural areas. The constellation now powers in-flight Wi-Fi on select airlines — United advertised Starlink connectivity during Super Bowl LX — and is expanding into direct cell-to-satellite service that allows standard smartphones to connect without any modified hardware. Maritime and aviation enterprise use has grown alongside the consumer base.
NASA chief Jared Isaacman, speaking at the Crew-12 post-launch briefing, captured the current moment accurately: "Just to recap, in the last couple of weeks, we brought Crew-11 home early. We pulled forward Crew-12 to today — all while simultaneously making preparations for the Artemis II mission." The ability to handle a medical evacuation, a rocket stand-down, and a pulled-forward crewed launch within the span of a month — without any of it being considered a crisis — reflects how much operational maturity SpaceX and NASA have built together since the first Crew Dragon flight in 2020.
What to Watch Next
The immediate focus is Crew-12's docking Saturday afternoon and the restoration of the ISS to its full seven-person crew complement. Beyond that, SpaceX has several significant events queued up.
Starship's 12th test flight is targeting mid-March 2026 from Starbase in South Texas, according to Elon Musk. SpaceX is testing what it describes as a "Version 3" Starship — larger, more powerful, and designed to carry heavier payloads than the current configuration. The vehicle that will eventually carry NASA's Artemis astronauts to the lunar surface depends on Starship reaching full operational capability, making each test flight a milestone for human lunar return planning.
Artemis II itself — NASA's first crewed flight around the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972 — is also in active preparation at Kennedy Space Center. The Space Launch System rocket recently completed an unannounced liquid hydrogen loading test. The mission will not use SpaceX hardware but represents the broader context in which SpaceX's commercial crew and cargo work operates: a NASA portfolio trying to sustain near-Earth operations while building toward deeper space.
For the Falcon 9, the next milestone worth watching is simply continuation of the pace. SpaceX set a global single-year launch record in 2022 with 60 launches, then broke it in 2023 with 96, then again in 2024 with 134. At 16 launches through February 11, the trajectory points toward another record year — assuming no major anomalies interrupt the cadence.
The second-stage issue on February 2 was the fourth upper-stage anomaly in 19 months. SpaceX's ability to investigate, understand, and return to flight quickly each time is a function of flying so often that engineering teams accumulate data and experience at a rate no other launch provider can match. That feedback loop — high volume enabling rapid learning — is arguably SpaceX's most durable competitive advantage, and it shows no signs of weakening.
