User:Jwolfe/sandbox/F9FH
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Since June 2010, rockets from the Falcon 9 family have been launched 352 times, with 350 full mission successes, one partial failure and one total loss of spacecraft (numbers current as of 5 June 2024). In addition, one rocket and its payload were destroyed on the launch pad during the fueling process before a static fire test.
Designed and operated by private manufacturer SpaceX, the Falcon 9 rocket family includes the retired versions Falcon 9 v1.0, v1.1, and v1.2 "Full Thrust", along with the currently active Block 5 evolution. Falcon Heavy is a heavy-lift derivative of Falcon 9, combining a strengthened central core with two Falcon 9 first stages as side boosters.[1]
The Falcon design features reusable first-stage boosters, which land either on a ground pad near the launch site or on a drone ship at sea.[2] In December 2015, Falcon 9 became the first rocket to land propulsively after delivering a payload to orbit.[3] This achievement is expected to significantly reduce launch costs.[4] Falcon family core boosters have successfully landed 316 times in 327 attempts. A total of 42 boosters have flown multiple missions, with a record of seven missions by the same booster.
Falcon 9's typical missions include cargo delivery to the International Space Station (ISS) with the Dragon capsule, launch of communications satellites and Earth observation satellites to geostationary transfer orbits (GTO), and Low Earth orbits (LEO), some of them at polar inclinations. The heaviest payload launched to a LEO are a batch of 60 Starlink satellites weighing a total 15,600 kg (34,400 lb) which SpaceX flies regularly, to a roughly 290 km (180 mi) orbit.[5] The heaviest payload launched to a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) was Intelsat 35e with 6,761 kg (14,905 lb).[lower-alpha 1] Launches to higher orbits have included the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) probe to the Sun–Earth Lagrange point L1, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) space telescope launched on a Lunar flyby trajectory, and the Falcon Heavy test flight which launched Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster into a heliocentric orbit extending beyond the orbit of Mars.