Falcon 9 Family rocket variant.
Performance data not available.
The Federal Aviation Administration authorized SpaceX to resume Falcon 9 launches.
Falcon 9 upper stage dry mass is 4.5 tons according to SpaceX numbers, and the analysis uses 6 tons dry mass to account for tank rigidization, landing legs, and docking mechanisms.
Booster Tracker reported that Starlink Group 11-25 marked SpaceX's 600th launch and that Falcon 9 B1097 achieved a fastest turnaround of 17 days, 15 hours, 20 minutes, and 38 seconds for that booster.
The Falcon 9 first stage represents approximately 70% of the rocket manufacturing cost.
The Starlink satellites on the affected Falcon 9 mission were successfully deployed.
SpaceX cooperated with NASA to redesign the COPVs to address NASA’s concerns about using that design on later Falcon 9 commercial crew launches.
The Falcon 9 octaweb structure on Block 5 is now bolted instead of welded, uses aluminum, and has greater thermal protection.
ASAP member Don McErlean identified an unresolved root cause for a composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) failure that led to a Falcon 9 pad explosion more than two years earlier.
SpaceX launched the entire Iridium Next constellation on Falcon 9 rockets from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
The NASA Launch Services Program awarded Category 3 certification to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
SpaceX’s planned Starship tests appear to parallel the company’s earlier development of Grasshopper and F9R Dev vehicles based on the Falcon 9 first stage.
If LeoSat and a manufacturing partner can reduce satellite mass to 800 kg, an entire orbital plane’s worth of satellites would probably fit on a single SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Seven satellites ordered from Boeing for the medium-Earth-orbit O3b mPower constellation are slated to launch on two SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets.
The SpaceX contract gives the Space and Missile Systems Center visibility into SpaceX operations while SpaceX deploys its Starlink broadband internet constellation with its fleet of Falcon 9 rockets.
Spaceflight works with launch vehicles including Falcon 9, Antares, Electron, Vega, and PSLV to provide a variety of launch options.
SpaceX is mastering reusability and executing Starlink’s launches at marginal cost, with Falcon 9 recovery and reuse becoming a standard endorsed by customers.
Rocket Lab operates the Electron small rocket and plans to develop a larger Neutron vehicle to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9.
Kleos Space dispatched a cluster of four Polar Vigilance Mission satellites (KSF1) from Delft in the Netherlands to Cape Canaveral for a launch onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 under a rideshare contract with Spaceflight Inc no earlier than June 2021.
The first planned launch under Planet’s SpaceX agreement is Flock 4x, consisting of 44 SuperDoves on the Falcon 9 Transporter-3 sun-synchronous rideshare mission scheduled for December 2021.
The first planned launch under Planet’s agreement with SpaceX is Flock 4x, 44 SuperDoves on the Falcon 9 Transporter-3 sun-synchronous orbit rideshare mission scheduled for December 2021.