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SpaceX Falcon 9 booster becomes fourth to launch and land ten times
For the fourth time, a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster has successfully completed ten orbital-class launches and landings.
A day later than planned, Falcon 9 booster B1060 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39A at 9:02 pm EST (02:02 UTC) on Tuesday, January 18th. Carrying an expendable Falcon upper stage and 49 Starlink V1.5 satellites, the booster performed its job without issue, boosting the payload and second stage mostly free of Earth’s atmosphere and about a quarter of the way to orbital velocity (2.2 km/s or Mach 6.5). As is now routine, B1060 then separated from the upper stage, flipped around, coasted to an apogee of ~130 km (80 mi), reentered Earth’s atmosphere, and touched down on one of SpaceX’s drone ships.
Unlike most other SpaceX launches, that drone ship – named A Shortfall Of Gravitas (ASOG) – was stationed southeast of Kennedy Space Center and off the coast of the Bahamas, where the weather and warmer seas are calmer and more optimal for safe booster and fairing recovery. Starlink 4-6 is the second time SpaceX has significantly customized a Starlink launch trajectory to optimize for booster recovery after Starlink 4-5, a virtually identical mission that launched on January 6th.
While the rare trajectory again prevented SpaceX from broadcasting Starlink satellite deployment live, CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the mission was a full success – the most important aspect of any operational rocket launch. Nonetheless, five years into Falcon reuse, booster recovery is now a crucial objective of virtually every Falcon launch – likely second only to payload deployment. Starlink 4-6 was no different and carried its own Falcon recovery and reuse milestones along with it.
For B1060, it was the booster’s tenth successful spaceflight and orbital-class launch and landing, making it the fourth Falcon 9 first stage to cross that milestone since May 2021 – and the third in the last four months. B1060 accomplished the feat faster than any of the three boosters before it, supporting ten orbital-class launches in a little over 18 months just five days after Falcon 9 B1058 crossed its own ten-flight milestone in 19 months.
More significantly, B1060’s success means that four boosters have now launched 41 times total and supported 40 of 73 Falcon launches completed by SpaceX in the last three years. While responsible for ~55% of all Falcon launches in that timeframe, those 4 boosters represent just 20% of the 20 boosters SpaceX launched at least once in the same period. That extraordinary accomplishment helps make it clearer than ever what a fleet of rockets capable of reliable recovery and reuse are truly capable of.
Starlink 4-6 included the 2000th Starlink satellite launched by SpaceX since May 2019 and, if all those spacecraft are in good health, raised the tally of operational Starlink satellites launched by Falcon 9 to 1967.
SpaceX has another two launches scheduled this month for five total: Italy’s CSG-2 Earth observation satellite no earlier than (NET) January 27th and Starlink 4-7 NET January 29th.
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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
