After 8 flights to space in a year, here’s what a Falcon 9 looks like

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  Liftoff! SpaceX and the 45th Space Launch Delta find a hole in the weather to get the Transporter-2 mission off the ground. [credit: Trevor Mahlmann ]

SpaceX launched its 20th Falcon 9 rocket of the year on Wednesday, and the booster lofting the Transporter-2 mission completed yet another successful flight to orbit.

This launch continues to cement the progress SpaceX has made toward the viable reuse of rocket first stages. This rocket core, named B1060, for booster number 1060, had previously flown into space seven times. Its first launch was a GPS III satellite mission for the US Space Force on June 30, 2020. So with Wednesday’s flight, the rocket has now flown eight missions in a calendar year.

That is a rate of one mission every 1.5 months. However, since early January, this same rocket has flown five missions, so it is approaching a rapid cadence of one launch per month. This is unprecedented for the Falcon 9 rocket or any other orbital spacecraft in history. Each of NASA’s space shuttle orbiters, for example, typically only flew one to two times per year, needing significant refurbishment between each flight.