SpaceX conducted its 500th successful Falcon 9 mission on Sunday, marking an impressive achievement for the company, which launched in 2002.
The Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 1:04 a.m. ET on Sunday, on the Commercial GTO-1 mission to deploy the Dror 1 geostationary communication satellite.
Falcon 9 completes its 500th mission pic.twitter.com/G6JVgulgo1
This was the 13th flight for the Falcon 9 first-stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched Crew-8, Polaris Dawn, CRS-31, Astranis: From One to Many, IM-2, and seven Starlink missions.
After landing back on the Read the Instructions droneship stationed off the coast of Florida, the booster will now be checked over and refurbished ahead of its 14th flight.
Falcon 9’s first stage has landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship pic.twitter.com/1qLYQhtbKJ
Reusing rockets is core to SpaceX’s approach to spaceflight as it allows for more frequent launches and at much lower costs.
Earlier this month, one of its Falcon 9 boosters launched and landed for a record 29th time.
While many of the launches have deployed satellites for an array of private and commercial firms as well as government agencies around the world, most have been used to deploy small internet satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink program. It also uses the Falcon 9 for crew and cargo flights to and from the International Space Station (ISS), with the next crewed mission to the ISS expected to take place in just a few weeks’ time.
The SpaceX team is now applying what it’s learned from the Falcon 9 to its next-generation Starship rocket, which it’s already launched and landed several times in tests at the company’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
However, an explosion last month involving the upper-stage spacecraft put a dent in its progress, and the company has yet to announce plans for the 10th launch of the rocket, the most powerful ever to fly.
Once operational, the Starship, comprising the first-stage Super Heavy and upper-stage Starship, will be used for crew and cargo missions to the moon and possibly Mars, too.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.