SpaceX has launched a 27 batch of 60 Starlink Internet satellites.
During this launch, the company launched and landed the same first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket for the tenth time.
SpaceX is known for its unusual approach to launch vehicles.
To reduce the cost of launching cargo into space, it reuses the first stages of a Falcon 9 rocket.
In 2017, the company successfully re-launched the same first stage for the first time, and in 2018 began using a new generation of rocket that is better adapted for reusable use than previous ones.
At that time, the first stages were reused only once, but with the new generation, the company planned to bring the rocket with a minimum interflight diagnostics to ten launches
The company plans to disassembled them after that for thorough diagnostics and replacement of part of the nodes.
Gradually, SpaceX ramped up the rate of re-launches and during the last launch of 60 Starlink Internet satellites reached a symbolic milestone of launching and landing the same stage for the tenth time.
During this mission, the company used a stage with the index B1051.
This stage was first used during the first launch of the manned spacecraft Crew Dragon in March 2019.
In the next eight missions, the company launched satellites: in two missions it helped launch third-party satellites (RADARSAT and SXM-7), and in the other six it launched her own Starlink satellites.
The nose cone of this rocket was also used earlier on another mission.
The tenth flight of this stage took place on May 9 from the US Air Force base at Cape Canaveral.
A few minutes after takeoff, the first stage separated from the second and then made a successful landing on the offshore platform.
At a press conference in late April, Elon Musk said that the first stage does not appear to have an obvious reusability limit
So, the company intends to re-launch this and other frequently flown stages during Starlink missions until one of them breakdown.
SpaceX does not plan to use stages with a record number of flights for manned launches.
At the same time, Musk noted that two or three flights before such a launch are better than launching a completely new stage, because they allow you to check all its nodes in real flight conditions.
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