SpaceX recently completed work on its new crew access arm at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station that doubles its capacity to launch astronauts from the Space Coast, but its first use was not for humans. Instead, it flew up another cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station on Thursday.

Dragon lifts off from pad 40 for the first time in four years! pic.twitter.com/b3FJiydyvJ

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 21, 2024

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 4:55 p.m. on the CRS-30 mission.

The first-stage booster for the flight made its sixth trip to space and another landing back at nearby Landing Zone 1, bringing sonic booms to parts of Central Florida.

SpaceX has not used Canaveral for a Dragon launch in more than four years and that was for a previous design of its spacecraft. All launches since have come from nearby Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-A, where all 13 of its Crew Dragon spaceflights have had to fly, until now.

SpaceX’s Sarah Walker, director of Dragon mission management, has worked on the cargo Dragon missions since they began in 2012.

“It was incredibly nostalgic for me to see the rocket and the spacecraft roll to the pad on those old stomping grounds early this morning,” she said. “Back then we loaded cargo while the vehicle was still horizontal using a mobile cleanroom before we would take the vehicle vertical for launch.”

The crew tower, though, first at KSC and now at Canaveral, opens the door, literally, for late access.

“It’s much easier to load a huge complement of time-critical NASA science into our Dragon spacecraft in the flight orientation,” she said.

The new Dragon has much more capacity than the ones used for SpaceX’s first 20 resupply missions. Now on its 30th, this Dragon will bring up more than 6,000 pounds of cargo research and supplies.

SpaceX opted to build out a second crew-capable launch site early on in its plans to construct a new launch tower at KSC for its massive Starship and Super Heavy spacecraft. NASA was concerned pad damage could affect its Commercial Crew Program access without the backup.

SpaceX and Boeing share the contract to provide U.S.-based human spaceflight for NASA astronauts, but SpaceX has been the sole provider since 2020 as Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner has faced a series of delays.

Boeing’s first test flight with humans on board is slated to fly as early as May, but in the meantime, SpaceX will have expanded its capability just in case.

The first human spaceflight use of SLC 40 could come this summer with the private Polaris Dawn mission with billionaire Jared Issacman. SpaceX has both the Crew-9 mission as early as August and a fourth private Axiom Space mission as early as October on the calendar, too.