SpaceX Bids Farewell To Workhorse Falcon Booster That Launched 2 Astronauts, Over 860 Satellites To Orbit

Elon Musk‘s rocket manufacturing company SpaceX on Saturday launched 23 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit with the help of a first-stage booster which successfully completed its 19th flight and is now set to retire.

What Happened: The booster completed its 19th and final launch on Saturday and landed back on Earth. 19 re-flights is a milestone for the company which is eyeing reusability to bring down the cost of traveling to space.

The booster previously launched Crew Demo-2, ANASIS-11, CRS-21, Transporter-1, Transporter-3, and several Starlink missions. Reminiscing the booster’s previous flights, SpaceX said, “This one reusable rocket booster alone launched to orbit 2 astronauts and more than 860 satellites — totaling 260+ metric tons — in ~3.5 years.”

The booster, though it landed successfully, tipped over on the droneship during transport back to Port. SpaceX pins this down to high winds and waves.

However, newer Falcon boosters don’t run the risk of a similar accident as they have upgraded landing legs. These upgraded legs can self-level and mitigate the kind of issue, SpaceX said in a post.

Why It Matters: SpaceX landed a booster successfully back on Earth for the first time in Dec. 2015, making the Falcon 9 the first orbital class rocket capable of re-flight. Most rockets are designed to burn up on returning to Earth.

In July this year, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk drew a parallel between rockets and other transport technologies and noted that no one would buy a single-use airplay, car, or bicycle. "They need to go all-in on reusability or be utterly uncompetitive," Musk said, referring to rival rocket makers.

Photo by Sundry Photography on Shutterstock

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