SpaceX made some history during Tuesday’s (Jan. 21) Starlink satellite launch from California.
On that mission, a Falcon 9 rocket sent 27 Starlink broadband craft to low Earth orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base. About eight minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9‘s first stage returned to Earth as planned, acing its landing on a drone ship at sea.
SpaceX has made such pinpoint touchdowns commonplace, pulling them off hundreds of times to date. In fact, Tuesday’s success brought the number of its orbital-class rocket landings to an even 400, the company announced via X.
The vast majority of those touchdowns have been achieved by the Falcon 9, SpaceX’s workhorse rocket. The company re-flies Falcon 9 boosters repeatedly. One first stage, for instance, has a record 25 launches and landings under its belt.
The rest of the 400 landings have come courtesy of SpaceX’s powerful Falcon Heavy, whose first stage consists of three modified Falcon 9 boosters. (The Heavy can notch three landings on a single mission, but it has flown just 11 times to date.)
Related: 8 ways that SpaceX has transformed spaceflight
Not included in the tally are landings by the next-gen Starship megarocket, a fully reusable vehicle that SpaceX is developing to help humanity settle the moon and Mars, among other tasks. (The upper stages of both the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are expendable.)
The 403.5-foot-tall (123 meters) Starship has launched on surborbital test flights seven times to date, most recently on Jan. 16. That mission featured a dramatic catch of Starship’s Super Heavy first stage by the “chopstick” arms of its launch tower at Starbase, in South Texas. It was the second time SpaceX had pulled off the feat; it also snagged Super Heavy on Starship Flight 5 this past November.
Starship’s upper stage, however, exploded about 8.5 minutes into Flight 7, apparently due to a propellant leak.
Article by:Source: mwall@space.com (Mike Wall)
