SpaceX has just achieved the 300th successful flight of its trusty Falcon 9 rocket — 14 years after the first one.
Tuesday’s milestone mission launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:11 p.m. ET and deployed the HTS-113BT communications satellite as part of the Merah Putih 2 mission for state-owned Indonesian company Telkomsat.
SpaceX shared a set of images on social media celebrating its 300th successful Falcon 9 launch.
Falcon 9 completes its 300th successful mission pic.twitter.com/to2GEik5oy
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 20, 2024
Here’s the rocket leaving the launchpad on Tuesday:
Liftoff! pic.twitter.com/JdOTFjkLjA
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 20, 2024
Around eight minutes later, the first-stage booster returned to Earth and made a perfect landing on a barge waiting in the ocean just off the Florida coast. As usual, the landing was captured by two cameras — one on the barge and one attached to the booster itself:
Falcon 9 has landed on the Just Read the Instructions Droneship, completing this booster’s 17th launch and landing pic.twitter.com/q4Jwvo7dRA
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 20, 2024
About half-hour after launch, SpaceX deployed the satellite in a geosynchronous transfer orbit:
Deployment of @Telkomsat Merah Putih 2 confirmed pic.twitter.com/6VHchNOnOR
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 20, 2024
This was the 17th launch of the first-stage Falcon 9 booster supporting this mission. It previously launched CRS-22, Crew-3, Turksat 5B, Crew-4, CRS-25, Eutelsat HOTBIRD 13G, mPOWER-a, PSN SATRIA, and eight Starlink missions.
That’s one flight short of that achieved by four other first-stage Falcon 9 boosters and two short of the record 19 flights performed by B1058 before it was lost at sea. The large number of reflights are a mark of the success of SpaceX’s reusable rocket system, which has helped to slash spaceflight costs and increase space access to more companies and organizations.
Tuesday’s mission was the 16th for SpaceX so far in 2024. By the same time last year, it had completed 12 missions, suggesting 2024 will be the busiest ever for the company.
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