OVERVIEW

A Falcon 9 first-stage booster is a reusable rocket booster used on the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy orbital launch vehicles manufactured by SpaceX. The manufacture of first-stage booster constitutes about 60% of the launch price of a single Falcon 9 (and three of them over 80% of the launch price of a Falcon Heavy), which led SpaceX to develop a program dedicated to recovery and reuse of these boosters for a significant decrease in launch costs. After multiple attempts, some as early as 2010, at controlling the reentry of the first stage after its separation from the second stage, the first successful controlled landing of a first stage occurred on 22 December 2015, on the first flight of the Full Thrust version. Since then, Falcon 9 first-stage boosters have been landed and recovered 53 times out of 63 attempts, including synchronized recoveries of the side-boosters of the Falcon Heavy test flight, Arabsat-6A, and STP-2 missions. One out of three Falcon Heavy center boosters landed softly but it was severely damaged during transport.

In total 23 recovered boosters have been refurbished and subsequently flown a second time including several boosters with three or four missions and two with five missions. SpaceX intentionally limited Block 3 and Block 4 boosters to flying only two missions each, but the company expects the Block 5 versions to achieve 10 flights each without major refurbishment.