SpaceX hits 100 Falcon 9 flights in 2026 with a record 37th booster

SpaceX launched its 100th Falcon 9 mission of 2026 early on Tuesday, and did it with a rocket that has now flown more times than any other orbital booster ever built.

The rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida carrying 29 Starlink internet satellites. Its first stage, designated B1067, was making its 37th trip to space and back — a reuse record for the fleet, and one that puts it within striking distance of NASA's Space Shuttle orbiter Discovery, whose 39 flights remain the all-time mark for a reusable spacecraft.

The cadence is the wider story. SpaceX reached 100 launches in 231 days this year, roughly two months faster than it hit the same figure in 2024. Last year the company flew 165 missions, more than every other orbital rocket in the world combined, and all 165 were successful.

Booster reuse is what makes that rhythm affordable. Recovering and reflying a first stage — the single most expensive part of the vehicle — turns each launch into a fraction of the cost of an expendable rocket, and removes the manufacturing bottleneck that caps how often a conventional launcher can fly. A stage on its 37th flight is also a data point about how far that hardware can be pushed: each additional flight is one more cycle of engine firings, atmospheric re-entry heating and landing loads that the airframe has absorbed and survived.

The milestone lands in a busy stretch for the company. Falcon Heavy, the three-core version of the same rocket family, is due to launch NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Kennedy Space Center on August 30 — a mission whose 4 billion dollar payload depends on exactly the reliability record the Starlink flights have been accumulating.