“Get the barge ready. Get the landing legs ready. This shit works.” So say words now still ringing in one’s ears a decade after the company first demonstrated supersonic retropropulsion possible. On Thursday morning at sunrise, that wild gamble on reusability achieved a new benchmark: Falcon 9 booster B1067 flew as the first orbital-class rocket stage on its 30th mission.
Blowing off the pad at 4:12 a.m. EDT at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center launch pad 39A, the Starlink 10-11 mission placed 28 Starlink V2 Mini satellites into low Earth orbit. The second Starlink launch SpaceX had carried out in under 24 hours, the mission showed a cadence which now rivals the combined annual launch totals of some competitors. The firm has launched over 1,800 of its next-generation satellites into orbit in 2025 alone, forming a broadband network intended to provide low-latency internet to even the most far-flung corners of the globe.
V2 Mini satellites have improved phased-array antennas and additional onboard argon Hall thrusters to provide greater maneuverability and throughput in comparison with previous generations. They are deployed into low Earth orbit in altitudes of about 530 kilometers as a mesh that allows each satellite to transfer data to others through inter-satellite laser communications, minimizing ground station utilization and offering oceanic and polar latitudes coverage.
B1067’s résumé is a survey of SpaceX’s to-do list: two Crew Dragon astronaut flights, two cargo resupply flights to the International Space Station, some commercial payloads, and 18 Starlink missions. That it has now made 30 flights three times the flight number ever considered realistic for a reusuable booster speaks to years of incremental engineering advancements. Between flight turnaround times, Falcon 9 first stages are thoroughly inspected, in some places specifically for Merlin 1D engines, composite overwrapped pressure vessels, and grid fins. Heat shield tiles and interstage hardware are refurbished or replaced where necessary and avionics systems fault-tested for flight cycling through repeated high-G ascent and reentry flight.
The 8.5 minutes pre-liftoff landing aimed at drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic. Successful, it was the vessel’s 122nd recovery and SpaceX’s 495th booster landing overall. Such self-guided landing ships, equipped with GPS-aided station-keeping thrusters and shock-mount deck structures, are at the heart of the company’s fast turnaround strategy. By recovering boosters from the sea, SpaceX can loft heavier payloads without holding back propellant for a return-to-launch-site flight path.
The trajectory for this milestone was established in September of 2013, when SpaceX first tested controlled entry of a Falcon 9 first stage. The achievement was accomplished by means of the control of supersonic retropropulsion engines firing while descending at subsonic speeds through an atmosphere that was heated to more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Early trials culminated in ocean crashes, but by December 2015 a first land recovery was accomplished, and the first drone ship landing in April of 2016. It was not even a year after this that a booster returned to the skies.
Skepticism was high. United Launch Alliance called its SMART engine-recovery idea “sensible” to bootstrap whole boosters, estimating that SpaceX’s method would take a minimum of 10 flights just to break even on its expenses. Since now one booster has flown more than 30, those cost estimates have been recalculated.
This also solves the engineering tightrope walk of reusability. As MIT’s Zack Cordero puts it, “With reusable liquid propellant rocket engines, you must ensure safe operation over multiple flight cycles and ease off on performance to reduce stress.” The open gas generator Merlin cycle, though less efficient than staged combustion, provides lower turbine inlet temperatures and greater hardware life. Subassemblies such as turbopumps, thrust chambers, and nozzles remain susceptible to cumulative erosion from thermal cycling and high-speed particle impingement. Emerging advances in additive manufacturing are now addressing these challenges with the ability to produce oxygen-compatible alloys and ceramic-coated toughened layers resistant to ignition and delamination during high-rate thermal transients.
Whereas competitors like Blue Origin and Rocket Lab are each also working on landing propulsive systems of their own, neither has yet approached Falcon 9’s level of operational capability. Blue Origin’s inaugural New Glenn booster failed to land in January of 2025, and Rocket Lab’s Neutron rocket has yet to be available. Chinese companies are however testing vertical takeoff and landing suborbital scales but become bogged down at full orbital reuse.
For SpaceX, B1067’s 30th flight isn’t simply a record-it’s a data point in expanding roster of high-cycle reusability performance. Every time it returns to flight, design enhancements, material choices, and maintenance procedures are continually refined, moving the industry closer to flying hundreds of times with minimal overhaul. As SpaceX’s vice president of Falcon and Dragon, Jon Edwards, warned last month, “We need to continue pushing ourselves to reach higher launch rates, higher lift capacity, and higher rates of quick reusability… when [they] do [materialize], we must make sure they’re still way behind us in our rearview mirror.”
