Falcon & Dragon
The workhorse. Seven hundred launches, a booster on its 37th flight, and the only American spacecraft carrying astronauts to the station.
Falcon 9 is a partially reusable two-stage rocket; Dragon is the capsule it carries, in cargo and crew versions. Together they are the most-flown orbital system in history.
The cadence
SpaceX flew 165 Falcon 9 missions in 2025 — 170 launches including five Starship tests — more than the rest of the world combined (329 orbital attempts globally). Through the first nine months of 2026 the company reported 113 launches, 29 for customers and 84 for itself (mostly Starlink), lofting 1,517 tonnes to orbit. Guidance for the year is “maybe 140, 145-ish” Falcon 9s. Q3 2026 results Launch list
Q3 2026 launches dipped to 35 from 44 a year earlier — the first visible sign of Starlink deployment shifting to Starship. Musk said in August that Falcon will retire once Starship flies multiple times a week; Shotwell, the same month, said SpaceX was “currently launching at our highest Falcon cadence.” Contracts keep Falcon busy through at least 2028: 28 national-security missions, 18 Golden Dome tracking launches through 2027, and crew rotations.
Reuse records
On June 8, 2026 booster B1067 flew a record 35th mission and landed on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas; by September it had reached 37. The Space Shuttle orbiter record is 39 (Discovery). Falcon's landing record stands around 658 of 671 attempts. Block 5 has flown 631 times with one failure. Space.com
Falcon Heavy has flown 13 times since February 2018, including the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Aug 30, 2026) and NROL-97 for the NRO (Oct 2, 2026). Vandenberg is now authorised for up to 100 Falcon launches a year.
SpaceX's own blooper reel of the landings that didn't work — the most honest video a rocket company has ever published.
Dragon: crews and cargo
| Mission | Launch | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Crew-10 | Mar 14, 2025 | Enabled the return of the Starliner astronauts Wilmore and Williams on Crew-9. |
| Fram2 | Apr 1, 2025 | First crewed polar orbit (90°); Chun Wang, Mikkelsen, Rogge, Philips; first Crew Dragon Pacific splashdown. |
| Axiom-4 | Jun 25, 2025 | First flight of Dragon Grace, the fifth and final capsule built; Peggy Whitson with astronauts from India, Poland and Hungary. |
| Crew-11 | Aug 1, 2025 | Returned early on Jan 15, 2026 after a medical event; 166 days. |
| Crew-12 | Feb 13, 2026 | First launch to use the new Landing Zone 40 at SLC-40; returned Oct 8, 2026 after 237 days. |
| Crew-13 | Oct 1, 2026 | Watkins, Delaney, Kutryk (first Canadian under Commercial Crew), Teteryatnikov; return ~Feb–Mar 2027. |
Coming up: Axiom Mission 5 (NET January 2027), Vast's Haven-1 station (NET Q1 2027), three more NASA crew rotations and three commercial “Starfall” reentry-capsule missions under contract. Starfall flew a second time on the Bandwagon-5 rideshare on October 20, 2026.
From Falcon 1 to here
Falcon 1 failed three times (2006, 2007, August 2008) before reaching orbit on September 28, 2008 — the first privately developed liquid-fuelled rocket to do so. Falcon 9 first flew June 4, 2010; Dragon first orbited and returned that December and berthed with the ISS in May 2012. The first booster landing came December 21, 2015; the first reflight March 30, 2017; Falcon Heavy's debut, carrying a Tesla Roadster, February 6, 2018; and Demo-2 returned human launch to the US on May 30, 2020. The full story is on the History page.