SpaceX achieved its 200th Falcon 9 landing on Monday, confirming yet again the viability of its reusable spaceflight system.
The company led by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk shared footage showing the first-stage booster in the final stages of its descent before making a perfect upright landing.
After delivering 72 spacecraft to orbit, Falcon 9 returns to Earth and completes SpaceX’s 200th landing of an orbital class rocket pic.twitter.com/7Aw52C97jk
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 13, 2023
This was the ninth launch and landing of this particular Falcon 9 booster, which previously supported the launch of the NROL-87, NROL-85, SARah-1, and SWOT missions, and also four Starlink missions.
After a number of mishaps where the booster toppled over and exploded shortly after touching down, SpaceX achieved its first successful landing in 2015. Since then, it’s gone from strength to strength, perfecting the landing procedure so that the booster can be refurbished and used multiple times. SpaceX also reuses its Dragon spacecraft for crew and cargo flights to and from the International Space Station, as well as the rocket’s fairing.
Using the Falcon 9’s first-stage booster for multiple missions has enabled SpaceX to cut the cost of spaceflight and also increase the frequency of launches.
In a tweet showing the increase in the pace of flights using refurbished boosters, SpaceX said that flight-proven first stages have launched up to 90% of the last 100-plus missions since the beginning of 2022.
Rocket reusability enables increased reliability and launch cadence pic.twitter.com/ijzlhfeXWo
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 12, 2023
Monday’s mission launched from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California for the Transporter-8 mission, which was SpaceX’s eighth flight for its dedicated smallsat rideshare program.
The rocket’s payload comprised 72 spacecraft, among them cubeSats, microSats, a re-entry capsule, and orbital transfer vehicles carrying spacecraft to be deployed at a later time.
The next Falcon 9 flight is set for June 18 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Related Posts
Peek inside NASA’s Mars habitat where humans train for life on the red planet
By living within the confines of the 1,700-square-foot Mars Dune Alpha habitat at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Ross Elder, Ellen Ellis, Matthew Montgomery, and James Spicer are helping NASA to better prepare for long-duration missions that will take humans into deep space.
How to watch NASA’s first spacewalk in nearly a year
The first NASA spacewalk in nearly a year will begin at about 8 a.m. ET on Wednesday, March 18. Read on for full details on how to watch.
SpaceX’s Starship rocket test scores several firsts ahead of flight 12
Preflight tests on the Starship rocket have been underway at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in southern Texas as the team works to ready the rocket for showtime.