Falcon 9


Falcon 9 is a partially reusable, two-stage-to-orbit, medium-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured in the United States by SpaceX. The first Falcon 9 launch was on June 4, 2010, and the first commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station launched on October 8, 2012. In 2020, it became the first commercial rocket to launch humans to orbit. The Falcon 9 has been noted for its reliability and high launch cadence, with successful launches, two in-flight failures, one partial failure and one pre-flight destruction.
The rocket has two stages. The first stage carries the second stage and payload to a predetermined speed and altitude, after which the second stage accelerates the payload to its target orbit. The booster is capable of landing vertically to facilitate reuse, while the fairing halves are scooped out of water after a parachute-assisted landing. This feat was first achieved on flight 20 in December 2015. As of, SpaceX has successfully landed Falcon 9 boosters times. Individual boosters have flown as many as flights. Both stages are powered by SpaceX Merlin engines, using cryogenic liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene as propellants. On the other hand, both active halves are recovered and reflown multiple times with first occurrence being, March 30, 2017, thereafter individual fairing halves having flown as many as 36 flights.
The heaviest payloads flown to geostationary transfer orbit were Intelsat 35e carrying, and Telstar 19V with. The former was launched into an advantageous super-synchronous transfer orbit, while the latter went into a lower-energy GTO, with an apogee well below the geostationary altitude. On January 24, 2021, Falcon 9 set a record for the most satellites launched by a single rocket, carrying 143 into orbit.
Falcon 9 is human-rated for transporting NASA astronauts to the ISS, certified for the National Security Space Launch program and the NASA Launch Services Program lists it as a "Category 3" launch vehicle allowing it to launch the agency's most expensive, important, and complex missions.
Several versions of Falcon 9 have been built and flown: v1.0 flew from 2010 to 2013, v1.1 flew from 2013 to 2016, while v1.2 Full Thrust first launched in 2015, encompassing the Block 5 variant, which has been in operation since May 2018.

Development history

Conception and funding

In October 2005, SpaceX announced plans to launch Falcon 9 in the first half of 2007. The initial launch would not occur until 2010.
SpaceX spent its own capital to develop and fly its previous launcher, Falcon 1, with no pre-arranged sales of launch services. SpaceX developed Falcon 9 with private capital as well, but did have pre-arranged commitments by NASA to purchase several operational flights once specific capabilities were demonstrated. Milestone-specific payments were provided under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program in 2006. The NASA contract was structured as a Space Act Agreement "to develop and demonstrate commercial orbital transportation service", including the purchase of three demonstration flights. The overall contract award was US$278 million to provide three demonstration launches of Falcon 9 with the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft. Additional milestones were added later, raising the total contract value to US$396 million.
In 2008, SpaceX won a Commercial Resupply Services contract in NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program to deliver cargo to ISS using Falcon 9/Dragon. Funds would be disbursed only after the demonstration missions were successfully and thoroughly completed. The contract totaled US$1.6 billion for a minimum of 12 missions to ferry supplies to and from the ISS.
In 2011, SpaceX estimated that Falcon 9 v1.0 development costs were approximately US$300 million. NASA estimated development costs of US$3.6 billion had a traditional cost-plus contract approach been used. A 2011 NASA report "estimated that it would have cost the agency about US$4 billion to develop a rocket like the Falcon 9 booster based upon NASA's traditional contracting processes" while "a more commercial development" approach might have allowed the agency to pay only US$1.7 billion".
In 2014, SpaceX released combined development costs for Falcon 9 and Dragon. NASA provided US$396 million, while SpaceX provided over US$450 million.
Congressional testimony by SpaceX in 2017 suggested that the unusual NASA process of "setting only a high-level requirement for cargo transport to the space station leaving the details to industry" had allowed SpaceX to complete the task at a substantially lower cost. "According to NASA's own independently verified numbers, SpaceX's development costs of both the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets were estimated at approximately $390 million in total."

Development

SpaceX originally intended to follow its Falcon 1 launch vehicle with an intermediate capacity vehicle, Falcon 5. The Falcon line of vehicles are named after the Millennium Falcon, a fictional starship from the Star Wars film series. In 2005, SpaceX announced that it was instead proceeding with Falcon 9, a "fully reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle", and had already secured a government customer. Falcon 9 was described as capable of launching approximately to low Earth orbit and was projected to be priced at US$27 million per flight with a payload fairing and US$35 million with a fairing. SpaceX also announced a heavy version of Falcon 9 with a payload capacity of approximately. Falcon 9 was intended to support LEO and GTO missions, as well as crew and cargo missions to the ISS.

Testing

The original NASA COTS contract called for the first demonstration flight in September 2008, and the completion of all three demonstration missions by September 2009. In February 2008, the date slipped into the first quarter of 2009. According to Musk, complexity and Cape Canaveral regulatory requirements contributed to the delay.
The first multi-engine test was completed in January 2008. Successive tests led to a 178-second, nine engine test-fire in November 2008. In October 2009, the first flight-ready all-engine test fire was at its test facility in McGregor, Texas. In November, SpaceX conducted the initial second stage test firing, lasting forty seconds. In January 2010, a 329-second orbit-insertion firing of the second stage was conducted at McGregor.
The elements of the stack arrived at the launch site for integration at the beginning of February 2010. The flight stack went vertical at Space Launch Complex 40, Cape Canaveral, and in March, SpaceX performed a static fire test, where the first stage was fired without launch. The test was aborted at T−2 due to a failure in the high-pressure helium pump. All systems up to the abort performed as expected, and no additional issues needed addressing. A subsequent test on March 13 fired the first-stage engines for 3.5 seconds.

Production

In December 2010, the SpaceX production line manufactured a Falcon 9 every three months. By September 2013, SpaceX's total manufacturing space had increased to nearly, in order to support a production capacity of 40 rocket cores annually. The factory was producing one Falcon 9 per month as of 2013.
By February 2016 the production rate for Falcon 9 cores had increased to 18 per year, and the number of first stage cores that could be assembled at one time reached six.
Since 2018, SpaceX has routinely reused first stages, reducing the demand for new cores. In 2023, SpaceX performed 91 launches of Falcon 9 with only 4 using new boosters and successfully recovered the booster on all flights. The Hawthorne factory continues to produce one second stage for each launch.

Launch history

Notable flights and payloads