Repeated launches of Falcon 9 rockets into space have become a common occurrence, but this past weekend, SpaceX's workhorse reached a significant historic milestone: the F9 B5 stage, designated B1062, successfully completed 20 cycles." start-landing."
Reusability record
Twentieth launch of the historical stage
The epoch-making event occurred on April 13, 2024 during the Starlink Group 6 mission 49 to launch a new batch of 23 Starlink Internet satellites into orbit. At 01:40 UTC (18:40 Kyiv time), the Falcon 9 rocket launched from the SLC-40 launch site at Cape Canaveral. According to a well-established scheme, after two and a half minutes the first stage separated, and in the ninth minute it landed on the autonomous offshore platform A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic Ocean.
The long journey of the record holder
The legendary B1062 stage took to the skies for the first time on November 5, 2020. For almost three and a half years, she helped put into orbit two manned Crew Dragon spacecraft (Inspiration4 and Axiom-1 missions), two GPS devices, telecommunications satellites (Nilesat-301, ArabSat 7B), 17 OneWeb Internet satellites and 507 of its own Internet Starlink satellites.
Fast launch record
In addition to the record for multiple launch-landing cycles, SpaceX set another achievement - it carried out two launches from the SLC-40 launch complex with an interval of less than three days. The previous one took place on April 10 at 05:40 UTC, and the next one took place on April 13 at 01:40 UTC, the interval between launches was only 2 days 19 hours 40 minutes (less than 68 hours), improving the previous record by about 26 hours.
Reusability is the key to savings
One of the main features of SpaceX rockets is the reusability of the first stage and nose fairing for significant cost savings on delivering cargo into space. After launch, the first stage lands on a spaceport or offshore platform, after which it undergoes recovery and is reused. Since 2017, SpaceX has been successfully updating records for the reusable use of launch vehicles: over the entire period, Falcon rockets have made 297 successful landings out of 308 attempts, 42 launch vehicles have flown several times. The company has also used the fairing halves more than 300 times.
Glossary
- SpaceX is a leading aerospace company founded by Elon Musk and a pioneer in the field of reusable launch vehicles.
- Falcon 9 is a family of two-stage partially reusable launch vehicles from SpaceX.
- Starlink is a global Internet coverage network project based on a constellation of small certified satellites in low Earth orbit.
- Crew Dragon is a reusable spacecraft from SpaceX for delivering people and cargo to the ISS and into lunar orbit.
Links
- twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1778964006197440519
- orlandosentinel.com/2024/04/12/spacex-launch-from-cape-tonight-to-mark-record-turnaround-record-booster-flight/
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Discussion of the topic – SpaceX has updated the record for repeated use of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle: the stage has completed 20 launches!
SpaceX continues to break records for the reusability of Falcon 9 rocket stages. This time, one of the stages completed its 20th successful launch, setting a new milestone in the space industry.
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