The Falcon 9 Is a semi-reusable, medium-class launcher developed in 2005 by SpaceX in response to Nasa’s need of a medium-class launcher to resupply essentials to the international space station, as part of the Commercial Resupply Program(CRS).
The first Falcon 9 flight took place in 2010, and after 5 flights the V1 version was retired in 2013.
The Falcon 9 rocket has been upgraded and tweaked over 11 years, but the biggest achievement took place successfully on December 21st, 2015 where the 1st stage of the Falcon 9 rocket Re-entered earth's atmosphere and successfully landed on a drone ship in the ocean, making the first perpulsive landing of an orbital class rocket.
Since then, the Falcon 9 has never looked back, being the workhorse of the SpaceX fleet. The Falcon 9 with its merlin engines have been very reliable, and currently there is NO suitable competition to the Falcon 9's cost, reliability and launch timetable, which can see 3 launches a month at times. The lastest block 5 variant has launched 57 times, with 100 percent success rate, as of April 2021.
Falcon 9 is the most launched rocket year by year, and has been launched 116 times in it's lifetime, 24 of which were in 2020.
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