However this period includes the Cosmos 2243 launch in April 1993. (Eventually, the Atlas V rocket could also exceed 100 consecutive successes before its retirement later this decade.)Īccording to Wikipedia, amid its long run, the Soyuz-U rocket had a streak of 112 consecutive successful launches between July 1990 and May 1996. The other is the American Delta II rocket, which recently retired. One is the Soyuz-U variant of the Russian rocket, which launched 786 times from 1973 to 2017. There are only two other rockets with a string of successful flights comparable to the Falcon 9. Speaking of safety, this is where the Falcon 9 rocket has really shone of late. Since the Amos-6 failure during its static fire test, SpaceX has completed a record-setting run of 111 successful Falcon 9 missions in a row. And while NASA's deep-space Orion vehicle and Boeing's Starliner spacecraft should come online within the next couple of years, the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft will very likely remain the lowest risk, and lowest cost, means of putting humans into orbit for at least the next decade. That is because it now provides the only means for US astronauts to get into space. Nevertheless, it seems likely the Falcon 9 will fly for a long time yet. The success of the company's Starship project will probably ultimately determine how long the Falcon 9 will remain a workhorse. However, SpaceX is also actively working to put its own booster out of business. At its current rate, the rocket could reach 500 flights before the end of this decade. There is no way to know how many missions the Falcon 9 will ultimately fly. To put the Falcon 9's flight rate into perspective, it surpassed the larger shuttle in flights in about one-third of the time. During its more than three decades in service, NASA's space shuttle launched 135 times, with 133 successes. The Falcon 9 reached a notable US milestone in January, equaling and then exceeding the tally of space shuttle launches. It has more than 1,900 launches across about a dozen variants of the booster dating back to 1957, with more than 100 failures. The Soyuz, of course, remains the king of all rockets. Globally, the still-flying Russian Soyuz and Proton rockets have more experience than the Falcon 9 fleet. Since the year 2020, the Falcon 9 has been the most experienced, active rocket in the United States, when it surpassed the Atlas V rocket in total launches. Not included in this launch tally is the pre-flight failure of a Falcon 9 rocket and its Amos-6 satellite during a static fire test in September 2016. Of those, one mission failed, the launch of an International Space Station supply mission for NASA, in June 2015. The Falcon 9 rocket has now launched a total of 139 times.
Lost amid the flurry of activity are some pretty significant milestones for the Falcon 9 rocket, which made its debut a little more than a decade ago. And another launch could happen as soon as today, shortly after noon (18:13 UTC), with a Starlink satellite launch planned from Florida. With 10 launches since the beginning of December, the company has flown rockets at a rate greater than one mission a week. SpaceX has been launching Falcon 9 rockets thick and fast of late.
0 kommentar(er)
