SpaceX
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon one step closer to human spaceflight after flawless launch
SpaceX has completed the first half of its critical Crew Dragon test flight, launching the brand new spacecraft into low Earth orbit (LEO) on the back of one of its workhorse Falcon 9 rockets. The rocket performed nominally, successfully sending the human-rated vehicle on its way towards the International Space Station (ISS).
Scheduled to dock with the ISS as early as 6 am EST (13:00 UTC) March 3rd, Crew Dragon will now face the real challenge of this demonstration mission, successfully operating in orbit and autonomously docking with the ISS. Along the way, SpaceX will be flight-testing a number of technologies and systems new to the company, while also providing reams of data that will help both SpaceX and NASA determine whether Crew Dragon performed as intended and is truly ready to carry astronauts into orbit.
https://twitter.com/_TomCross_/status/1101764440800878593
While this successful launch is a critical milestone for DM-1, Crew Dragon, SpaceX, and NASA, it’s hard to say there is anything particularly shocking about its successful completion. Including this launch, SpaceX has now successfully launched Falcon 9 42 times in a row since January 2017, including seven orbital launches and ISS missions with Cargo Dragon, a heavily proven spacecraft with 16 successful missions since its 2012 debut. Put simply, SpaceX has an incredibly dense volume of experience successfully launching, landing, recovering, and refurbishing orbital-class rockets and spacecraft, as well as a proven track record of success and an ability to confront and move past challenging vehicle failures.
Crew Dragon demo mission (DM-1) is set to launch early tomorrow morning, March 2, at 2:49 a.m. EST from Kennedy Space Center. What an absolutely breathtaking scene at LC-39A. #spacex #nasa #CrewDragon #falcon9 pic.twitter.com/T95wCumGzq
— Pauline Acalin (@w00ki33) March 1, 2019
Crew Dragon’s successful launch is no less of a major achievement, even if it was about as much of a known quantity as any other Falcon 9 mission. The real challenge ahead of the spacecraft is successfully demonstrating the efficacy of its design and operations in space, particularly while interacting and docking with the ISS. Prior to tomorrow morning, all SpaceX Dragons have berthed with the ISS, meaning that they effectively come up from underneath the ISS (a lower orbit), stop a few meters away, and are ‘grappled’ by a large robotic arm (known as Canadarm2) that also attaches the spacecraft to a docking port. If – at any point during the pre-berthing approach – Cargo Dragon were to lose control, the spacecraft would essentially fall back down the gravitational hill it had just climbed, a built-in abort that would nominally prevent the spacecraft from impacting the Station in most failure scenarios.
The launch of Crew Dragon demo (DM-1) as seen from the roof of NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building. What a powerful and moving mission. Another step closer! #spacex #nasa #CrewDragon pic.twitter.com/aWIPtDcVir
— Pauline Acalin (@w00ki33) March 2, 2019
Crew Dragon, on the other hand, has been designed to dock with the ISS. Generally speaking, this means that the spacecraft will approach the Station side-on, as if it were a car accelerating faster than another car in the same ‘lane’. While there are many built-in points during the docking approach where Crew Dragon will halt all forward movement, the differing docking approach means that any loss of control or contact while on a vector towards the ISS could mean that it is unable to abort, significantly increasing the likelihood of an impact event in worst-case scenarios. While Crew Dragon is designed with extreme redundancy and fault-tolerance in mind, the stakes are definitively higher compared to Cargo Dragon.
Liftoff of Dragon 2 at 2:49am! SpaceX’s first flight of their new capsule preparing to take astronauts back to the International Space Station from American soil.
See the full launch gallery and support NASAspaceflight by subscribing to L2: https://t.co/whUFQd0FNU pic.twitter.com/TIhJxCSM8j
— Brady Kenniston (@TheFavoritist) March 2, 2019
Conscious of this fact, the new spacecraft will be tasked with completing a significant number of on-orbit maneuvers to verify nominal performance before allowing the autonomous vehicle to attempt a docking with the ISS. While that docking attempt is scheduled to occur as early as 6 am EST (13:00 UTC), live coverage – hosted by both NASA and SpaceX – will begin around 3:30 am EST (10:30 UTC) on Sunday, March 3rd. While these on-orbit webcasts can admittedly be rather dry compared to the thrill of launch, it will arguably be the most significant and mission-critical portion of Crew Dragon’s launch debut, alongside the spacecraft’s safe reentry and Atlantic Ocean landing and recovery. Follow along live at spacex.com/webcast.
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Elon Musk put a number on where he thinks SpaceX’s Starship program is headed by 2030, replying on X a day after President Trump signed a memo pushing the country toward 1,000 space launches and reentries a year.
The exchange started when Aaron Burnett, co-founder of propulsion startup Mach 33, posted that “1,000 launches/reentries is the goal,” quoting White House science adviser Michael Kratsios on the newly signed National Space Transportation Policy. Burnett noted that the FAA’s own bull-case forecast reached only 385 annual launches by 2030, while his firm’s conservative model already put SpaceX alone near 940. Musk responded, “We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized. Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!”
We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized.
Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2026
That figure is specific to Starship, the rocket SpaceX is still developing for orbital and lunar missions, not the Falcon 9 fleet that carries most of the company’s current launch volume. Starship has flown twice this year, a slower pace than the four and five flights SpaceX managed in 2024 and 2025. Getting from two flights a year to 30 a day is the scale of jump the new federal policy is meant to clear regulatory room for.
Trump’s memo, signed Thursday, directs agencies to identify new launch and reentry sites on federal land, including a new reentry site within 90 days, and to speed up the permitting and environmental reviews that have long slowed cadence growth. It also sets a goal of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2028 and placing initial lunar base elements by 2030, tying the launch buildout directly to NASA’s Artemis program.
SpaceX has already been pushing the FAA toward higher numbers on its own. The agency approved up to 44 annual Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in February, on top of a 2024 review that raised the cap at Starbase in Texas to 25 a year. Those approvals cover a fraction of the 10,000 annual flights Musk is now describing, which shows how far current permitting still sits from the administration’s stated target.
The near-term test of all this is more modest. SpaceX cleared a full-duration, six-engine static fire on its next Starship vehicle this week, the last major hardware checkpoint before Flight 14, which is targeting no earlier than August 28 and is expected to attempt the vehicle’s first full orbital mission. Musk said last week that a tower catch of the upper stage is still probably months away, a reminder that the immediate roadmap remains far more incremental than the daily launch numbers he just posted.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced today that the company will likely attempt to catch the Starship upper stage with its launch tower arms “in a few months.”
In a post on X, Musk wrote, “Looks like we will probably catch the ship with the tower in a few months. If there had been a tower out to sea where we practiced landing the ship, it would have been caught.” He added that the first reflight of a Starship vehicle is expected by the end of 2026 or early 2027, describing it as “a fork in the road of history for consciousness reaching the stars.”
Looks like we will probably catch the ship with the tower in a few months. If there had been a tower out to sea where we practiced landing the ship, it would have been caught.
First reflight of the ship will be either end of this year or early next. That will be a fork in the… https://t.co/O5g9pqrzyo
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 20, 2026
Musk’s prediction comes amid ongoing progress toward full reusability of the Starship system, a two-stage rocket designed for rapid turnaround and dramatically lower launch costs. Catching the upper stage, known simply as “ship,” with the Mechazilla tower’s mechanical arms would mark a major milestone. It would allow both stages to return directly to the launch site for quick refurbishment and reuse, eliminating the need for ocean recovery.
Musk has previously signaled plans for a ship catch. In July, shortly after SpaceX’s wildly successful Starship 13 mission, he stated that the company would attempt to catch the ship with the tower on the next flight unless problems emerged in the mission data review. Earlier comments also outline conditions such as successful soft ocean landings before attempting a land recovery to minimize risk.
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The latest update from Musk adjusts this timeline to a few months, reflecting the iterative nature of the test campaign.
SpaceX has already demonstrated the tower catch technique successfully with the Super Heavy booster on a couple of occasions. The first successful booster catch occurred during Flight 5 in October 2024, when the massive first stage returned to the Starbase pad in Texas and was plucked from the air by the tower arms.
Additional catches followed on later flights, including Flight 7, proving the concept for the booster and building confidence in the system as a whole.
Achieving a similar catch for the upper stage would represent a significant step forward. The ship returns from much higher speeds and greater heat loads after orbital or near-orbital flight. Success would advance SpaceX’s goal of full and rapid reusability, potentially reducing the cost of access to orbit by a factor of 100 or more and supporting ambitions for frequent satellite deployments, lunar missions, and eventual Mars flights.
Musk has long emphasized that true reusability, refueling rather than discarding hardware, is essential for making humanity a multi-planetary species.
As SpaceX continues refining Starship through successive test flights, the coming months will test whether the ambitious catch timeline can be met. The combination of prior booster successes and improving ship landing precision suggests the company is steadily closing in on this historic capability.
SpaceX has achieved an incredible milestone by launching its 11,000th Starlink satellite into orbit.
This accomplishment occurred during the Starlink Group 17-50 mission, which lifted off on August 19 at 04:01 UTC from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Falcon 9 launches 24 @Starlink satellites from California pic.twitter.com/UscpmAxDls
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 19, 2026
A Falcon 9 rocket carried 24 Starlink V2 Mini satellites on this flight, successfully deploying them into low Earth orbit approximately one hour after liftoff. The first stage booster, identified as B1097 on its twelfth flight, landed successfully on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean.
According to tracking data compiled around that date, this deployment brought the total number of Starlink satellites in orbit to just over 11,000.
The Starlink program began with test satellites known as Tintin A and B, launched on February 22, 2018. The first operational batch of 60 Starlink satellites followed on May 24, 2019, when a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral. Those initial satellites marked the start of a rapid expansion that has continued for more than seven years.
SpaceX has conducted hundreds of dedicated Starlink missions since then, routinely launching batches of 20 to 30 satellites at a time using reusable Falcon 9 rockets. By mid-2026, the company had already surpassed 12,000 total satellites launched across all versions, with continuous replacements for units that deorbit as designed to manage space debris.
Looking ahead, SpaceX continues to expand the Starlink constellation to enhance global broadband coverage, capacity, and speed. The network already serves millions of users across more than 160 countries and supports applications ranging from residential internet to maritime, aviation, and emergency services.
Future plans center on next-generation hardware, including larger V3 satellites capable of delivering substantially higher throughput, which require the increased payload capacity of the Starship vehicle currently under development and testing.
In July, SpaceX submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission seeking authority for a Gen3 constellation of up to 100,000 satellites. These spacecraft would operate in very low Earth orbit shells at altitudes near 325 kilometers and 475 kilometers. The filing requests use of existing Ku, Ka, V, and E band spectrum along with new greenfield W and D band frequencies between 92 and 275 GHz.
SpaceX states that the expanded system aims to deliver multi-gigabit symmetrical broadband to consumers, enterprises, governments, and billions of AI-powered devices worldwide while handling a majority of global internet traffic. Approval and subsequent deployment would depend on regulatory review and the operational readiness of Starship for high-volume launches.
This ambitious scale reflects SpaceX’s ongoing commitment to providing ubiquitous high-speed connectivity from space.
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