SpaceX hits landmark 500th Falcon 9 booster landing after Space Coast launch

Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel on Oct 16, 2025

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

The 85th orbital launch from the Space Coast in 2025 also marked a milestone for SpaceX with the 500th successful landing of a Falcon 9 rocket booster.

The early Thursday morning launch came as the workhorse rocket for Elon Musk’s company lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 5:27 a.m. Eastern time carrying 28 more Starlink satellites into space.

The first-stage booster made its third flight with a recovery landing downrange on its droneship Just Read the Instructions stationed in the Atlantic.

It marked SpaceX’s 130th Falcon 9 launch of the year including 80 from its Space Coast launch pads at Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral with the other 50 from California. It has also flown its in-development Starship and Super Heavy on five suborbital launch attempts from Texas this year.

The company managed its first successful Falcon 9 landing in 2015, five years after the rocket’s debut.

It has also managed 19 other booster landings from its Falcon Heavy rockets, which are essentially three Falcon 9 rockets strapped together.

Most landings occur on the company’s droneships about 400 miles from the coast, with two — A Shortfall of Gravitas and Just Read the Instructions — based in Florida that sail out of Port Canaveral. A third, Of Course I Still Love You, is stationed in California.

Its land recoveries have been at Canaveral’s Landing Zones 1 and 2, but the company is building out new rocket recovery pads with the goal of bring the rocket boosters back to the same launch complex from where they launched.

The Federal Aviation Administration has already given SpaceX the green light for that at Canaveral’s SLC 40 along with an approval to increase Falcon 9 launches there to up to 120 per year. A similar request is in the works at KSC where SpaceX seeks to increase Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches to 36 per year.

SpaceX is also in the midst of constructing Starship launch towers at both KSC’s Launch Complex 39-A and at Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 37, which was home to United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy until its final mission last year. Those two launch sites await the completion of a pair of environmental impact statements before they could get FAA approval for use.

_____