SpaceNews: In December, SpaceX landed the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket for the hundredth time
The first stage of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket after launching in December with the Dragon cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) made its hundredth landing, SpaceNews reports .
The publication notes that out of 31 launches of the Falcon 9 carrier, its first stages successfully returned to Earth 30 times.
"We're very excited about this, and we're also excited to see how few new stages we have to produce over the years, and we're developing robust fleet maintenance processes," said Sarah Walker, Dragon Mission Control director at SpaceX.
In December, SpaceNews noticed that this American company surpasses all countries except China in the number of launches.
In the same month, The Washington Post wrote that SpaceX had destroyed Roscosmos' monopoly on delivering people to the ISS. According to Brian Weeden, director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation analytical organization, interviewed by the publication, "the United States no longer needs Russia to get to the ISS, and SpaceX is eating up, if not destroying, the market for Russian commercial manned launches."
