A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket just set a new record
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Trevor Mogg Published July 1, 2025 |
A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster has launched and landed for a record 29th time.
The record-breaking rocket lifted off at 2:28 a.m. ET on Wednesday, July 2 (11:28 p.m. PT Tuesday night) from Cape Canaveral in Florida, carrying 27 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit.
SpaceX shared a livestream of the mission on X, and also posted a clip of the first-stage booster landing for the 29th time:
This particular Falcon 9 booster — labeled B1067 — flew for the first time in June 2021. This latest flight was B1067’s fifth of 2025 and came 55 days after its most recent mission in mid-May.
The trusty 41.2-meter-tall booster previously launched CRS-22, Crew-3, Turksat 5B, Crew-4, CRS-25, Eutelsat HOTBIRD 13G, O3B mPOWER-A, PSN SATRIA, Telkomsat Merah Putih 2, Galileo L13, Koreasat-6A, and 17 Starlink missions.
SpaceX’s system of reusing the first-stage booster — by landing it upright shortly after deploying the upper stage — has enabled it to slash the cost of space missions and ramp up launch frequency. This makes orbital missions more affordable for companies and organizations that are keen to access space.
SpaceX successfully landed a Falcon 9 booster for the first time in 2015 and since then its team of engineers has gone on to perfect the procedure, with launches and landings becoming pretty much routine.
It means that SpaceX now has a growing number of boosters that have roared to orbit multiple times. Another contender for the top spot is B1063, which has flown 26 times, most recently on June 4.
Taking what it’s learned from the Falcon 9, SpaceX has designed its next-generation and much more powerful Starship rocket to also be fully reusable. It’s already demonstrated the ability to bring home the Starship first stage, though the vehicle still has much testing to undergo before it becomes operational.
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