Launch Stuff

[Yazata]

Today, December 21, 2025, is the tenth anniversary of the first successful landing of an orbital booster. B1019 accomplished that feat by returning to a landing on a landing pad at Cape Canaveral. B1019 has since become a monument outside the SpaceX factory in Hawthorne California where it was made.

Since that initial success, the reusable Falcon 9's have gone on to a very successful career, currently launching about 90% of total mass to orbit every year, with all the other American, Russian, European, Chinese, Japanese, Indian and everyone else's rockets splitting the remaining 10%.

(Nasaspaceflight.com photo)

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[Yazata]

Yesterday, veteran booster B1067 launched and landed perfectly for a record breaking 34th time!

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[Yazata]

Ageless veteran booster B1067 just successfully put its payload into orbit and then returned for a perfect landing, for the 35th time!

(SpaceX photo)

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[Yazata]

Big Falcon 9 program news from Cape Canaveral. Kiko Dontchev announced that after some 260 Starlink launches over the last seven years, SpaceX has conducted its last Falcon 9 Starlink launch from Cape Canaveral!

In the future, SpaceX will be moving to the larger new-generation Starlinks, with approximately 10x the capacity along with enhanced direct-to-cell capabilities. And these much larger Starlinks can only be launched by Starship.

https://x.com/TurkeyBeaver/status/2092267257179021326

It's not the end for Falcon 9 at Cape Canaveral though. SpaceX will continue to serve commercial, NASA and national security customers with Falcon 9 launches from Cape Canaveral for the foreseeable future.

And Falcon 9 will continue to launch the older Starlinks from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

In an appropriate sendoff, the last Florida Starlink launch on Falcon 9 was conducted by our stalwart B1067 on its record-breaking 36th flight. And it performed flawlessly!

(SpaceX photo)

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