Early on the 9th of September 2023 a SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off from SLC-40 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket was carrying twenty-two more satellites for SpaceX Starlink internet constellation in low Earth orbit.
The booster for this mission was B1076 making its seventh flight on this mission and successfully landed downrange on the drone ship 'A Shortfall of Gravitas'.
This mission was also SpaceX's 150th booster landing in a row of its current landing streak for the Falcon 9. Since its first landing on the 21st of December 2015 the Falcon 9 has landed 224 times successfully. Falcon 9 currently boasts an impressive reliability record with a higher landing reliability record than some operational rockets too.
What is Falcon 9?
Falcon 9 is currently the world's only operational partially reusable medium-lift rocket and has two stages both burning kerosene and liquid oxygen.
Falcon 9 in its current form is called Block 5 which is the final major revision to the rocket by SpaceX as it gears up for Starship orbital launches and operations in the future. SpaceX claims that Falcon 9 can send 22,800 kilograms into low Earth orbit when expended or 17,400 kilograms when reused. Similarly, it can send 8,300 kilograms into geosynchronous transfer orbit when expended or 5,500 kilograms when reused.
What is Starlink?
Starlink is a space-based satellite internet constellation owned and operated by SpaceX. All of SpaceX's Starlink satellites operate in low Earth orbit providing internet to the ground below to customers of the service. SpaceX is currently expecting to generate $30 billion in revenue by 2025 from its Starlink internet service. As of May 2023, Starlink currently has 1.5 million subscribers to the service. SpaceX has launched over five thousand Starlink satellites with a little over four thousand operational on orbit.
SpaceX currently has over four thousand Starlink satellites in orbit with twelve thousand planned to be deployed with a possible increase to forty-tw0 thousand satellites.