A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster is set to make history tonight as it launches — and lands — for a record 29th time.
The spaceflight company is targeting 1:29 a.m. ET on Wednesday, July 2 (10:29 p.m. PT Tuesday night) for the Falcon 9 launch of 27 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
This particular Falcon 9 booster — labeled B1067 — flew for the first time in June 2021. It’ll be B1067’s fifth flight of 2025 and comes 55 days after its last flight in mid-May.
A live webcast of tonight’s mission, which you can watch on X @SpaceX, will begin about five minutes prior to liftoff. Viewers will be able to witness the record-breaking launch, as well as stage separation and the booster’s homecoming as it lands on a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Florida.
The trusty 41.2-meter-tall booster previously launched CRS-22, Crew-3, Turksat 5B, Crew-4, CRS-25, Eutelsat HOTBIRD 13G, O3B mPOWER-A, PSN SATRIA, Telkomsat Merah Putih 2, Galileo L13, Koreasat-6A, and 17 Starlink missions.
SpaceX’s system of reusing the first-stage booster by landing it upright shortly after deploying the upper stage has enabled it to slash the cost of space missions and ramp up launch frequency. This makes orbital missions more affordable for companies and organizations that are keen to access space.
SpaceX successfully landed its Falcon 9 booster for the first time in 2015 and since then it’s gone on to perfect the procedure, with launches and landings becoming pretty much routine.
It means that SpaceX has a growing number of boosters that have roared to orbit multiple times. Another contender for the top spot is B1063, which has flown 26 times, most recently on June 4.
Taking what it’s learned from the Falcon 9, SpaceX has designed its next-generation and much more powerful Starship rocket to also be fully reusable. It’s already demonstrated the ability to bring home the Starship first stage, though the vehicle still has much testing to undergo before it becomes operational.
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