The Falcon 9 was developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX to be the primary orbital-class rocket able to launching a number of missions, as a solution to drive down prices, and SpaceX made historical past in 2017 by launching the identical rocket for a second time.
The rocket utilized in Sunday’s launch of a US Nationwide Reconnaissance Workplace safety payload was the identical one which launched an NRO payload in February, in response to the workplace.
SpaceX has now re-flown boosters and spacecraft dozens of occasions on satellite tv for pc and cargo launches, however final yr it used reused {hardware} for a mission together with astronauts, marking the primary time the corporate had performed so on a crewed mission.