SpaceX is stretching the lifetime of its reusable Falcon 9 boosters

By STEPHEN CLARK - 7/10/2023, 11:59 AM. 15 launches used to be the limit for the Falcon 9 first stage, but they just went to 16 with B1058 on Sunday.

This is Falcon 9’s second booster life extension

Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of build and flight reliability, said in May that engineers were in the process of certifying Falcon 9 boosters for up to 20 flights for Starlink missions. Launches with customer satellites may be limited to rockets with lower flight counts. NASA has only certified reused Falcon 9 boosters with five or fewer flights for the agency’s astronaut missions going to the International Space Station....

SpaceX’s latest iteration of the Falcon 9 rocket design—called the Block 5—flew for the first time in 2018. At that time, SpaceX had the goal of launching each Falcon 9 Block 5 booster 10 times.... [Aviation Leak] reported that SpaceX put booster components through vibration testing to four times the fatigue life of what they would experience over 15 flights, giving engineers confidence that the rockets will continue to fly successfully.