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Tuesday, September 14, 2021

TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: SpaceX Starlink Group 2-1 Mission

I have cued the video to start one minute before launch: scroll back if you wish to watch from earlier in the countdown. This was the tenth successful launch and landing for Falcon 9 first stage booster B1049, the oldest booster currently in service, having made its first flight on 2018-09-10. This booster joins B1051, which achieved the milestone of ten flights on 2021-05-09, meeting the original design goal of ten flights per booster. Elon Musk has said that SpaceX will continue to inspect and re-fly boosters, building experience in long-term re-use. I suspect that “fleet leaders” with the greatest number of flights will be reserved for in-house Starlink missions, where a loss due to unanticipated aging issues would not impact an external customer.

Posted at September 14, 2021 10:32