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SpaceX sets Dragon reuse record, debuts drone ship on first launch in two months
Update #2: After a 24-hour weather delay, conditions were far more favorable on August 29th, allowing a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to lift off for the first time in almost two months and send a cargo-filled Dragon spacecraft on its way to the International Space Station (ISS).
Aside from marking the end of SpaceX’s longest launch hiatus in two years, CRS-23’s successful liftoff also means that the company has smashed the world record for fastest orbital space capsule reuse. As part of Cargo Dragon 2’s first reuse ever, SpaceX launched Dragon C208 just seven and a half months (227d) after its first orbital reentry and splashdown, handily beating the previous record of 328 days. Additionally, flying for the fourth time, Falcon 9 booster B1064 became the first rocket to land on brand new SpaceX drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas (ASOG) after sending Dragon C208 on its way to the ISS.
Getting a nice view of CRS-23's trunk as it separates, confirming no trunk cargo on this flight. pic.twitter.com/ZeJjviKqFE— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) August 29, 2021
Update: Although the weather forecast has worsened, SpaceX remains on track to attempt its first launch in eight weeks – a mission that will also smash one of the company’s orbital spacecraft reusability records.
While mostly mundane, a system preceding Tropical Storm Ida is producing conditions less than optimal for rocket launches, raising the risk of in-flight lightning strikes and the chances of Falcon 9 and Dragon flying through clouds containing precipitation (rain/ice/etc). Ultimately, that means that there’s just a 40% chance (down from 50% in the last few days) that weather conditions will be favorable for SpaceX to launch CRS-23. Regardless, barring a surprise announcement in the next few hours, it appears that there’s enough of a chance that SpaceX and NASA will still make an attempt.
If all goes according to plan, a flight-proven Falcon 9 rocket will send an upgraded Cargo Dragon on the way to orbit for the second time in seven months – almost twice as fast a turnaround as SpaceX’s ~340-day record for orbital spacecraft reuse. Tune in below around 3:20am EDT (07:20 UTC) to catch the hopeful launch live.
For the first time in more than nine weeks, SpaceX has completed a routine Falcon 9 preflight test known as a static fire and verified that the rocket is ready to launch later this week.
Save for at least one booster qualification test completed at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas development facilities, Falcon 9’s August 25th static fire is the first since June 22nd. The upgraded Cargo Dragon space station resupply mission the rocket will support will also be SpaceX’s first launch since June 30th – the company’s longest hiatus between launches since a three-month pause that began two years ago.
Now, just a few days before that drought is expected to end, a SpaceX executive has partially explained why the company hasn’t launched a single Falcon rocket in ~60 days after completing a record 20 orbital launches in the first half of 2021.
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Speaking at the 2021 Space Symposium on August 24th, SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell revealed that the company had chosen to pause Starlink missions (representing the vast majority of its 2021 launches) and focus on preparing a new generation of satellites for flight. Believed to be called Starlink V1.5, those new satellites represent a relatively small design change save for one crucial addition: multiple lasers.
All the way back in mid-2018, SpaceX launched its very first pair of Starlink prototype satellites – spacecraft that largely functioned as expected and provided a wealth of data but were almost nothing like the Starlink V0.9 and V1.0 spacecraft SpaceX would eventually start launching in 2019. Nevertheless, they did carry sets of small lasers generally known as optical intersatellite links or OISLs for short. Not radically dissimilar to the hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber optic cables that make up the backbone of the internet, lasers operating in the vacuum of space can effectively mirror the extraordinary bandwidth and performance offered by fiber connections – but wirelessly.
Instead of carefully insulated cables filled with tiny threads of glass, which really just serve as a controlled environment for light-based communications, OISLs enable a similar feat by replacing cables with extraordinarily precise mechanisms capable of aiming lasers with sub-millimeter precision from dozens or hundreds of miles away. As a result, laser interlinks are fairly complex and expensive devices – not something currently economical to install on thousands of satellites mainly focused on affordability.
SpaceX, of course, has wanted to install unprecedentedly affordable laser interlinks on thousands of Starlink satellites for as long as the constellation has been publicly discussed. If realized, it would create an extraordinary orbital mesh network that would allow Starlink to self-route a large portion of user communications without the need for a colossal network of tens of thousands of ground stations covering every inch of Earth – land, sea, ice, and all. A Starlink constellation with near-universal laser interlinks could also potentially allow the constellation to not only match – but beat by a large margin – the latency of best-case terrestrial fiber-optic connections.
After effectively completing Starlink’s first ‘shell’ of satellites earlier this year, SpaceX shifted its focus to preparing for polar Starlink launches from both its west and east coast facilities. While the first shell lacked interlinks entirely, SpaceX appears to have decided that all polar Starlink satellites will be launched with its own custom-built space lasers, even if that means delaying Starlink launches until those lasers are ready for action. Due to the fact that the vast majority of SpaceX’s launches as of late have been its own Starlink missions, the company’s Falcon rockets simply haven’t had anything to launch.
That should change on August 28th, when a thrice-flown Falcon 9 booster launches a refurbished spacecraft on its second orbital space station resupply – a first for SpaceX’s upgraded Cargo Dragon 2 vehicle. A Shortfall of Gravitas (ASOG), SpaceX’s newest drone ship, will also be supporting its first Falcon landing ever as part of CRS-23, hopefully recovering Falcon 9 booster B1064 for a fifth launch later this year.
Tune in around 3:20am (07:20 UTC) on Saturday, August 28th to watch SpaceX’s first launch in two months live.
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SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
Elon Musk shed two new bits of detail on Starship following its 13th test launch, which was an overwhelming success.
SpaceX launched Starship for the 13th time last Friday after two delays: one on Monday when several Raptor engines did not ignite, and another on Thursday due to unfavorable weather conditions in Starbase, Texas.
The launch was overwhelmingly successful. SpaceX was able to complete a necessary test of the heat shield tiles by increasing the acceleration of Starship from launch throughout the flight; 20 Starlink v3 satellites were released with no issue; the Super Heavy Booster landed safely in the Gulf of America, Ship successfully reignited engines while in space; and it also splashed down without incident in the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Nevertheless, more details are coming out about Starship, and Musk is doing the talking.
Starship Will Be Retrieved in the Ocean
Musk revealed on Tuesday night that Starship would be recovered by a ship in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX routinely tries to recover Starship after splashdown in an effort to find out more about the flight by examining the spacecraft afterward.
We’re sending a ship out to recover Starship https://t.co/fUqUZTITO9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 28, 2026
This helps engineers find out more about why things might have happened, allows them to examine any potential damage or anomalies that might have occurred, and increases the chances of an even more successful flight next time thanks to the additional information recovered.
Ship Could Have Been Caught by Tower Arms, Musk claims
Musk has already indicated that SpaceX will plan to attempt a catch of Starship with the 14th test flight. While this would be a major accomplishment, it would be an expected next step, considering the fact that the Super Heavy Booster has already been caught by the chopsticks on numerous occasions.
The ship landing was precise, meaning that it would have been caught by the tower arms https://t.co/6nbNrRfX9P
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2026
A ship catch would be a great indication of where SpaceX stands in terms of reusability and launch cadence. A successful catch with relatively no incidents would be a good sign that SpaceX is nearing a more frequent launch of Starship, but also that the reusability of the massive rocket would be something many would expect in the near future.
It is a necessity to make life multiplanetary.
Elon Musk has updated his timeline for when humans will walk on Mars and for when ships will simply get there.
The objective of getting to Mars has been one of Musk’s biggest goals since becoming a serial entrepreneur and realizing that time on Earth is limited. Musk has said several times he hopes to die on Mars, and not by impact.
Musk now believes that people will be on Mars in “roughly 5 to 7 years.” He said that a Mars lander will get there “a few years sooner.”
People on Mars in roughly 5 to 7 years.
Mars lander a few years sooner.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2026
The response from Musk comes after NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said that SpaceX’s biggest priority is the Moon and not Mars. Because of this, Isaacman conceded that he believes nuclear power and propulsion investments will provide “potentially the pathway with the fewest miracles required to put four people on Mars in the next 10 to 15 years.”
Of course, this is what NASA can do through taxpayer funding and nuclear investments, he added.
Musk’s grand ambitions are much more optimistic than most, and it is certainly a double-edged sword. This is not the first time timelines for Mars have been somewhat lofty, especially to those normal thinkers like you and me, not super geniuses like Musk.
In fact, the SpaceX and Tesla frontman has said on at least a dozen occasions that we could be on Mars in the coming years. Musk said 2020 would be the big year as early as 2009. In 2020, he was “highly confident” of a landing in 2026, and had even said 2024 in a best-case scenario.
The point is, the range has varied, and it’s anyone’s guess when we’ll get there. This latest adjustment to the timeline is typical of Musk, and while the Moon has seemingly taken priority over Mars, it is still worth mentioning that the ultimate goal is to make life multiplanetary, and it starts potentially with the Red Planet.
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
Elon Musk sheds two new bits of detail on Starship after 13th test launch
