What is the Falcon 9?

The name comes from its nine Merlin 1D engines, fueled by RP-1 kerosene and liquid oxygen, which produce about 7,600 kN at liftoff. That redundancy lets the mission continue even if one fails, as happened in 2012. The second stage, with a single vacuum-adapted Merlin, places the payload into orbit. The rocket stands 70 m tall and weighs 549 t; it can carry 22,800 kg to low Earth orbit in expendable mode and up to 8,300 kg to geostationary transfer orbit.

The first Falcon 9 launched on June 4, 2010. In 2012 it carried the first Dragon capsule to the International Space Station, and in 2013 it debuted the 1.1 version, taller and more powerful. On December 21, 2015, a first stage landed back at Cape Canaveral for the first time, and in March 2017 a previously flown booster flew again. The Block 5, from 2018, is the definitive version, designed for dozens of flights per unit with minimal maintenance between missions.

The Falcon 9 is the world's most-flown rocket per year: 132 launches in 2024, most of them deploying SpaceX's own Starlink constellation. It is also the only American rocket that regularly carries crews, with the Crew Dragon capsule since the Demo-2 mission in May 2020. Its three-core version, the Falcon Heavy, shares the same first stage. The boosters land on the ground or on barges in the Atlantic and Pacific, and some have surpassed 30 flights (as of December 2025).