Last year reusable rockets entered the mainstream, and there’s no going back

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  On December 13, 2020, a Falcon 9 rocket launched the Sirius XM-7 mission. It was the seventh flight for this first stage. [credit: Trevor Mahlmann ]

The notion of reusing rockets finally went mainstream in the year 2020. As the year progressed, it became clear that SpaceX launch customers have gotten a lot more comfortable with flying on used, or “flight-proven” first stages of the Falcon 9 rocket. One commercial customer, Sirius, launched its XM-7 satellite on the seventh flight of a Falcon 9 booster in December. Also, the first national security payload flew on a reused booster last month when the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office launched its NROL-18 mission on the fifth flight of a Falcon 9 first stage.

NASA, too, agreed to fly future crewed missions to the International Space Station—beginning with the Crew-2 spaceflight in the spring, of 2021—on used Falcon 9 rockets. And the US Space Force said it would launch its GPS III satellites on used boosters in the future, as well. These are among the highest-value missions the United States has.

Another important step came when a second US launch company, Rocket Lab, began to demonstrate rocket reuse. The company experimented throughout 2020 on ways to protect the return of its Electron first stage during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Then, it recovered an Electron stage for the first time in November.