Milestone Mission Proves the Potential of Reusable Rocket Technology

SpaceX checked off another benchmark this week by completing the 500th orbital launch mission using a reusable rocket booster. Falcon 9 lifted off at 12:21 am on November 17, sending Europe’s Sentinel-6B ocean-monitoring satellite into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

The booster flying in this specific mission is fairly new compared to others, having been used twice before to ship Starlink satellites into orbit. Others have been broken in a little more, with some having flown more than a dozen times in their career. The record currently stands with the B1067 booster, known as the “king of the Falcon boosters,” at a total of 31 missions.

“Congratulations to the SpaceX team on completing 500 (!!!!) missions with flight-proven rocket boosters,” said SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell. “You’ve made the impossible possible with reusable rockets, paving the way to land huge amounts of cargo and lots of people to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon and beyond with Starship!”

The Falcon 9 program was first flown in 2010 and has been reused routinely since 2017. It has been central to SpaceX’s success, capable of facilitating multiple missions per week. The rocket earned a 500th title of its own back in July at the same time as B1067 took its 29th flight.

The milestone mission’s cargo was Sentinel-6B: a joint effort led by ESA, NOAA, NASA, and EUMETSAT to support climate modeling, weather forecasting, and coastal risk assessment projects. The spacecraft separated from the upper stage right on schedule, beginning its deployment sequence into the reference orbit used by previous missions in the series.

SpaceX used the exciting occasion as an opportunity to share what comes next for its Starlink network. CEO Elon Musk has previously noted that demand for computing power, largely driven by AI, will push infrastructure off-planet, with satellites potentially acting as the first generation of orbital data centers. The upcoming V3 Starlink satellites are designed around that premise, significantly increasing throughput while offloading the launch burden from Falcon 9 to Starship.

The company expects V3 capabilities to enable not just broadband coverage but also higher-level functions, including distributed computing and commercial data-handling payloads. Musk has pointed to long-term possibilities; everything from cloud hosting to AI model training in orbit using uninterrupted solar power and passive radiative cooling.

FMI: www.spacex.com