SpaceX launches first stage for record 34th time, passing shuttle Atlantis
SpaceX today successfully launched another 29 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The first stage (B1067) completed its 34th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic, only 32 days after its previous launch. With this flight, this stage passed the space shuttle Atlantis to hold second place in the rankings of the most reused launch vehicle.
39 Discovery space shuttle
34 Falcon 9 booster B1067
33 Atlantis space shuttle
32 Falcon 9 booster B1071
31 Falcon 9 booster B1063
30 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle
27 Falcon 9 booster B1077
27 Falcon 9 booster B1078
SpaceX continues to recycle its first stages in a month or less, so expect this booster to pass Discovery before the end of the year. We should also expect all the boosters in the list above to do the same by the end of next year, though it is possible some will be retired as SpaceX begins to transition from its Falcon 9 high launch rate to using Starship/Superheavy instead.
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
40 SpaceX
16 China
5 Rocket Lab
3 Russia
SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, as it did in both ’24 and ’25.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
SpaceX today successfully launched another 29 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The first stage (B1067) completed its 34th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic, only 32 days after its previous launch. With this flight, this stage passed the space shuttle Atlantis to hold second place in the rankings of the most reused launch vehicle.
39 Discovery space shuttle
34 Falcon 9 booster B1067
33 Atlantis space shuttle
32 Falcon 9 booster B1071
31 Falcon 9 booster B1063
30 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle
27 Falcon 9 booster B1077
27 Falcon 9 booster B1078
SpaceX continues to recycle its first stages in a month or less, so expect this booster to pass Discovery before the end of the year. We should also expect all the boosters in the list above to do the same by the end of next year, though it is possible some will be retired as SpaceX begins to transition from its Falcon 9 high launch rate to using Starship/Superheavy instead.
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
40 SpaceX
16 China
5 Rocket Lab
3 Russia
SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, as it did in both ’24 and ’25.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Amusing thing about this launch: the rumble of liftoff interrupted NASA’s Artemis press conference this morning. “I don’t think there’s earthquakes in Florida.”
Amit Kshatriya handled it calmly and humorously. But the whole thing had a certain symbolism about it.
https://x.com/dpoddolphinpro/status/2038728451532701931
Will SpaceX use any of those often-used first stages in any of the Falcon Heavy launches?
If so, would these launches count towards the totals for each single rocket?
Ronaldus Magnus: As far as I am concerned, every time a booster gets reused, it goes into the count.
Atlantis had downmass capabilities Falcon lacks–and that Starship hasn’t demonstrated yet.
SRB comparisons are more apt.
It is also fitting that it happened on March 30; because on this day in 2017, SpaceX successfully launched and landed a previously flown Falcon 9 booster for the first time.
We take this kind of thing for granted now . . . and that was the goal all along.
Richard M observed: “We take this kind of thing for granted now . . . and that was the goal all along.”
Anyone in primary or secondary school today, is going to see launch footage prior to the middle of the Teens, and think, ‘What a waste’. And, they will be right. We learn, we advance. Yesterday’s miracle is today’s mundane.
To be fair, I was agast in the 80s when I learned that we just dumped all of the Apollo rockets into the ocean after they were used once.
The Falcon 9 first stage is just that — a first stage. It wasn’t intended to be more than that!
The downmass comes with Dragon, not Falcon. And the downmass Dragon can bring back (which includes, chiefly, the astronauts) is more than adequate to the needs of NASA and the commercial clients who have purchased missions on it.
But since we are speaking of the Shuttle, it is remarkable how little of its downmass capability was actually used. As it turned out, the use case wasn’t nearly what NASA had been hoping for when it designed the Shuttle in the 1970’s.
Richard M: One of the reasons the shuttle brought back so little was partly due to NASA’s ban on commercial activities on ISS. If NASA had allowed companies to manufacture products on ISS for sale back on Earth, the shuttle flights to ISS in the 2010s would have brought back a lot more.
Capabilities that we can’t afford to make good use of may as well not exist, and from that standpoint Falcon and Dragon easily outstrip the Shuttle. The latter was a technical marvel, but a practical failure. Makes me think of the common, if flawed, belief that German technology in WWII far outstripped that of the Allies (for anyone about to complain, it was a mixed bag, sometimes the Nazis were ahead and sometimes behind), but the Allies could outproduce the Axis by such a margin it didn’t matter. That last is at least true, and it also shows up here. Falcon may not be as sophisticated a vehicle, but it has such low costs and good reliability that it wins anyway. Low-cost iterative learning is a powerful tool.