SpaceX
SpaceX achieves new milestone in space industry with 450th Falcon 9 mission
On March 26, 2025, SpaceX launched a new Falcon 9 rocket from California and created a new milestone in the space industry by completing the 450th mission.
The space vehicle lifted off at 3:11 p.m. PT from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The second stage carried 27 Starlink satellites to orbit to improve the satellite internet coverage.
After sending the second stage to orbit, the first stage returned to Earth and landed on a droneship after exhausting the final burn and deploying the landing legs. This mission marks a record 24th flight for the booster, which previously supported:
- Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich
- DART
- Transporter-7
- Iridium OneWeb
- SDA-0B
- NROL-113
- NROL-167
- NROL-149
- 16 Starlink missions
This 450th Falcon 9 mission shows the significance of SpaceX’s reusable rocket capabilities, with rapid booster turnaround.
Source – SpaceX
Falcon 9 is 70 meter tall, and 3.7 meters wide. It has 549,054 kg mass and 22,800 kg of payload capacity to LEO and 8,300 kg to GTO and 4,020 kg payload to Mars. Its first stage equips 9 Merlin engines and aluminum-lithium alloy tanks that contain liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene propellant.
At liftoff, it generates more than 1.7 million pounds of thrust at sea level. Falcon 9’s second stage has 1 vacuum engine that generates 981 kN of thrust with 397 seconds of burn time. It could restart multiple times to place different payloads into separate orbits.
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