SpaceX and the New Space Race: 2026 Status

SpaceX is now the hinge of a space race that looks nothing like the one in the 1960s. Instead of two governments racing for prestige, a private company flies reusable rockets hundreds of times, sells internet to millions of households, and holds the NASA contract for a Moon lander, while China pursues its own crewed lunar landing. This article sets out where each piece stands as of October 2026: Falcon 9, the 14 Starship flights so far, Starlink, the reshaped Artemis plan, and the rivals closing in, with the numbers dated and sourced.

What makes this a "new" space race

The first space race was a state project. The Soviet Union and the United States paid for rockets that flew once and were thrown away, because the goal was a flag, not a business. The current contest has three differences.

First, cost matters. A rocket that can land and fly again changes who can afford orbit. Second, the customers are mostly commercial: satellite operators, internet providers, and companies that want to deliver payloads to the Moon. Third, the political axis is no longer the Soviet Union against the United States. It runs between a US-led group of partners and a China-led group, and each is competing to set the rules for activity on the Moon.

A useful way to hold all this in your head is the difference between building a bridge and running a ferry. In the 1960s, nations built one-off bridges to the Moon. Today, SpaceX runs a ferry service to orbit, with the price per trip falling as the boats are reused. Whether the ferry can be scaled up to carry people to the Moon and Mars is the open question for the rest of this decade.

The history of how rockets got here is covered in our piece on the invention of the rocket, and the pioneers behind the physics appear in our profiles of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Robert Goddard. What follows is the present tense.

How SpaceX cut the cost of reaching orbit

The central trick is reuse. A conventional rocket burns through its first stage, which holds most of the hardware cost, and drops it into the ocean. Falcon 9's first stage turns around, lands under power, and flies again. Per Wikipedia's Falcon 9 summary as of October 20, 2026, the rocket had flown 697 times with 694 full mission successes, and the record for a single booster stood at 37 flights (Wikipedia: Falcon 9).

Think of it as the difference between a disposable paper cup and a ceramic mug. The mug costs more to make and clean, but if you use it hundreds of times, the cost per coffee collapses. The question is how many uses before the mug cracks, and the 37-flight record is SpaceX's answer so far.

What Falcon 9 costs compared with the Shuttle

Comparing launch costs is slippery because price (what a customer pays) and cost (what the operator spends) are different numbers. The table sets out the available figures and flags what is arithmetic.

Vehicle	Figure	What it measures	Source
Space Shuttle	About $1.5 billion per flight, averaged over 135 missions	Full program cost divided by flights	Wikipedia: Space Shuttle program
Space Shuttle	Up to about 23,000 kg to low Earth orbit	Payload capacity	Wikipedia: Space Shuttle program
Space Shuttle	About $65,000 per kg	Our arithmetic: $1.5 billion divided by 23,000 kg	Calculated
Falcon 9	$74 million list price in 2026	Price to customers	Wikipedia: Falcon 9
Falcon 9	22,800 kg expendable; about 17,500 kg with drone-ship landing	Payload capacity	Wikipedia: Falcon 9
Falcon 9	About $3,200 to $4,200 per kg	Our arithmetic: $74 million divided by 22,800 kg or 17,500 kg	Calculated

The Shuttle figure is generous to the Shuttle, since it assumes a full payload on every flight, which rarely happened. Even so, the comparison suggests Falcon 9 is roughly 15 to 20 times cheaper per kilogram in list-price terms, which is a large gain but less than the "95 percent" often quoted, and it compares a price with a program-wide cost, so treat it as a rough guide.

The Shuttle's own numbers were also very different in kind. NASA's incremental cost per flight (the extra spending to fly one more mission) was about $409 million in 2010, which gives about $14,186 per kg at that year's prices (Wikipedia: Space Shuttle program). Which Shuttle number you pick depends on whether you count the fixed costs of keeping the program alive.

Reuse is not the same as risk-free

Reusable does not mean flawless. Wikipedia's Falcon 9 article lists several incidents in 2024 and 2025: an upper-stage failure on a Starlink flight in July 2024 that lost the payload and grounded the fleet for about two weeks, a booster that tipped over after landing in August 2024, a September 2024 deorbit-burn problem after the Crew-9 launch, a February 2025 upper-stage failure whose debris came down near Poznań, Poland, and a booster lost after a droneship landing in March 2025 (Wikipedia: Falcon 9). With 694 full successes in 697 launches, the overall record is excellent, but a cadence this high means that rare failure modes show up regularly.

Vertical integration as a cost engine

SpaceX builds engines, structures, and avionics in house, which lets it change designs without negotiating with suppliers. That approach also shaped how the company tests Starship, where early flights are treated as data collection and hardware is lost on purpose when it teaches something. The upside is speed. The downside is that flight-test failures happen in public.

Starship: 14 flights in three and a half years

Starship is a two-stage vehicle meant to be fully reusable: a Super Heavy booster with 33 Raptor engines and a Starship upper stage with six. The stainless-steel vehicle burns liquid methane and liquid oxygen. As of late 2026, the third generation, called Block 3 or V3, stands about 124 meters tall and uses the Raptor 3 engine, which flew for the first time on Flight 12 on May 22, 2026. Wikipedia's Starship article lists a target payload to low Earth orbit of 100 metric tons for Block 3 and an estimated 200 metric tons for a planned Block 4 (Wikipedia: SpaceX Starship). Those payload numbers are design goals, not demonstrated performance.

Every flight so far

The table below follows the launch list on Wikipedia as of September 28, 2026. Outcome labels follow that page, which counts Flights 3, 12, and 13 as successes even though some hardware was lost, so read the notes rather than the labels alone.

Flight	Date (UTC)	Version	Booster	Ship
1	April 20, 2023	V1	Not recovered	Lost
2	November 18, 2023	V1	Lost in the Gulf	Destroyed by flight termination system
3	March 14, 2024	V1	Lost in the Gulf	Lost on reentry
4	June 6, 2024	V1	Controlled Gulf splashdown	Controlled Indian Ocean splashdown
5	October 13, 2024	V1	Caught by the tower	Controlled Indian Ocean splashdown
6	November 19, 2024	V1	Diverted to the ocean	Indian Ocean splashdown
7	January 16, 2025	V2	Caught by the tower	Lost about three minutes after telemetry loss
8	March 6, 2025	V2	Caught by the tower	Lost control
9	May 27, 2025	V2	Lost in the Gulf	Fuel leak; broke up over the Indian Ocean
10	August 26, 2025	V2	Controlled Gulf splashdown	Soft splashdown within 3 m of target
11	October 13, 2025	V2	Controlled Gulf splashdown	Landed on target
12	May 22, 2026	V3	Failed landing burn; hit water at speed	Controlled splashdown; 22 test satellites deployed
13	July 24, 2026	V3	Failed landing burn; hit water at speed	Soft splashdown; survived tip-over
14	September 28, 2026	V3	Controlled Gulf splashdown	Controlled Pacific splashdown

Source: Wikipedia: List of Starship launches, which compiles SpaceX and FAA records.

Overall, the page counts nine successes and five failures. Read as a trajectory, the early V1 flights showed the vehicle could survive launch and reentry, the V2 flights produced two tower catches of the booster but also three ship failures in 2025, and the V3 flights are the first to combine a newer engine with a second launch pad.

Flight 14 was the first orbital flight

Flight 14 on September 28, 2026, was Starship's first orbital mission and first operational payload deployment: it placed 26 Starlink V3 satellites into orbit. One ship engine shut down early and the mission ended sooner than planned (Wikipedia: List of Starship launches). All earlier flights flew suborbital paths so that a failed ship would come down in the ocean. Putting satellites into a stable orbit is the moment Starship started to behave like a launch vehicle rather than a test article.

What is next, according to the same list: Flight 15 was provisionally targeted for no earlier than November 8, 2026, with the booster and ship that completed catch-related testing at the second Starbase pad, and Musk said it would be the last flight before an attempted ship catch, though SpaceX had not reconfirmed the catch plan as of September 28. Flight 16 was provisionally listed for no earlier than December 10, 2026, from Florida's Launch Complex 39A. These dates are provisional and may move.

Why catching a rocket matters

The tower catch that debuted on Flight 5 in October 2024 looks like a stunt, but the logic is engineering. A booster that lands on legs has to carry the legs, which adds dead weight on every flight. A booster that is caught by arms on the launch tower (nicknamed "chopsticks") needs no legs, so it carries more payload, and it arrives exactly where it will be refueled for the next flight.

Imagine a tennis player who has to catch their own serve every time. The catch is harder to learn than a bounce, but you save the effort of walking to pick up the ball. Per the flight table, the booster was caught on Flights 5, 7, and 8; on later flights, SpaceX tested other landing profiles, and Flights 12 and 13 had failed landing burns. A ship catch has not been attempted yet.

The science behind these maneuvers connects to basic rocket physics, which our guide to how rocket engines actually work explains in detail. A deeper vehicle-level explainer is in SpaceX Starship Explained.

The refueling problem behind a Moon landing

Starship's size creates a different difficulty: to go beyond Earth orbit with a heavy payload, it needs to be refilled in space. The reason is the rocket equation, which says that the fuel needed grows exponentially with the change in speed you want. A big vehicle can reach low Earth orbit with nearly empty tanks left, so to send it on to the Moon it must be topped off by tanker ships.

An analogy: imagine driving across a desert where the only gas stations are at the start of the road. You can carry more fuel in more cans, but the extra cans make the car heavier and use up more fuel. A better plan is to place a gas station in the middle of the desert. A propellant depot in orbit is that gas station, and tanker flights are the supply trucks.

According to Wikipedia's Starship HLS article, a depot would be filled by roughly 4 to 14 tanker flights, and estimates of the number needed vary: Musk said four to eight in 2021, the US Government Accountability Office said 16 launches overall, a NASA official said "in the high teens" in 2023, and a SpaceX vice president said "10-ish" in 2024 (Wikipedia: Starship HLS). Two milestones must come first: a long-duration flight to test how well propellant is stored in space (boil-off is the enemy), and a ship-to-ship transfer. In March 2024, Flight 3 tested a transfer of propellant between tanks inside one ship. Both full demonstrations were targeted for 2026 by SpaceX, with NASA's schedule showing the transfer in early 2027.

Artemis in 2026: what changed

NASA selected SpaceX in April 2021 for a $2.89 billion firm-fixed-price contract to develop Starship as a Human Landing System, including an uncrewed demonstration and a crewed landing (NASA release, April 16, 2021). In 2022, NASA added about $1.15 billion for a second-generation demonstration, and in May 2023, NASA awarded Blue Origin $3.4 billion for its Blue Moon lander (Wikipedia: Starship HLS).

Artemis II flew

Artemis III was originally the landing mission, and the plan has since changed. Artemis II launched on April 1, 2026, from Kennedy Space Center on NASA's Space Launch System with the Orion capsule, carrying Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch of NASA and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency on a crewed lunar flyby. NASA lists the mission duration as 9 days, 1 hour, and 32 minutes, with splashdown on April 10, 2026 (NASA: Artemis II).

Artemis III is no longer a landing

As of NASA's mission page in October 2026, Artemis III is a crewed demonstration in low Earth orbit targeted for 2027, in which Orion will test rendezvous and docking with one or both commercial landers, and "Americans return to the Moon on Artemis IV" (NASA: Artemis III). Wikipedia's summary of the March 2026 architecture update adds that Orion would dock with test articles of both Blue Moon and Starship HLS, that astronauts would not enter the Starship article, and that the first crewed landing moved to Artemis IV, targeted for early 2028. At the October 2026 International Astronautical Congress, NASA had not yet picked which lander would carry the Artemis IV crew (Wikipedia: Starship HLS).

Mission	Role as of October 2026	Target
Artemis II	Crewed lunar flyby, completed	Flew April 1 to April 10, 2026
Artemis III	Crewed low Earth orbit test of lander docking	2027
Artemis IV	First crewed landing since Apollo 17 in 1972	Early 2028 (per Wikipedia)
Artemis V	Second landing, start of surface base work	Late 2028 (per Wikipedia)

Why did the plan change? The record points to schedule realism. NASA's Inspector General judged the lander schedule unrealistic in 2021, noting that major NASA programs averaged 8.5 years from contract award to first operational flight while HLS was attempting about half that, and that the uncrewed landing demonstration, originally planned for 2025, had slipped to late 2027 on the October 2026 schedule (Wikipedia: Starship HLS). For the program's goals and structure, see our explainer on the Artemis program.

Why the Moon is worth the trouble

The scientific and economic case for returning is laid out in why the Moon is more valuable than you think. The strategic case is simpler: whoever has the infrastructure first has a say in how it is used.

Mars: a goal, not a schedule

Starship was designed with Mars in mind, and the vehicle's design choices, such as methane propellant that could in principle be made from Martian carbon dioxide and water, point that way. But as of October 2026, no Starship has flown beyond Earth orbit, none has been refueled in space, and none has landed anywhere except in the ocean. The launch list above contains no Mars flight.

The hard steps remain unproven: long interplanetary transit, entry and descent through a thin atmosphere at this vehicle's mass, surface power, radiation protection, and the ability to make return propellant. Our articles on the real challenges of living on Mars and Mars settlement engineering lay them out. A fair summary of SpaceX's public Mars timelines is that they have repeatedly moved, and that no independent schedule exists to anchor them.

What Starship does change is the arithmetic of cargo. If it flies often and cheaply, delivering tons to Mars becomes a design question rather than an impossibility. That shift in feasibility is real even though the first crew is years away.

Starlink: the revenue engine

Starlink pays for much of this. Wikipedia's Starlink article, as of June 2026, lists about 10,413 satellites in low Earth orbit, of which 10,397 were operational, and says Starlink accounts for about 75 percent of all active maneuverable satellites in orbit. The service is offered in about 160 countries and territories (Wikipedia: Starlink).

Date	Approximate subscribers
December 2022	1 million
December 2023	2.3 million
December 2024	4.4 million
December 2025	8.9 million
March 2026	10.3 million
June 2026	12 million

Source: Wikipedia: Starlink, which compiles company statements and estimates.

The same article lists 2025 Starlink revenue of $11.4 billion and operating income of $4.4 billion, with 2024 the first profitable year. Divided by 12, that revenue is about $950 million per month, consistent with the rough "$1 billion a month" often quoted. The page also shows average revenue per user falling from $99 a month in December 2023 to $66 by March 2026, which fits a service expanding into cheaper plans and poorer markets.

Why low orbit means low latency

The old article quoted latency figures without explaining them. Physics supplies a floor. Radio signals travel at the speed of light, about 299,792 kilometers per second. A geostationary satellite sits at an altitude of 35,786 kilometers, so a request must go up and a reply must come down, which is four trips across that altitude, or at least about 477 milliseconds before any processing. Starlink's Gen2 shells sit at roughly 525 to 535 kilometers, so the same four trips take about 7 milliseconds at minimum (Wikipedia: Starlink). Real-world latency is higher because of routing and processing, but the low orbit leaves room for performance close to ground-based broadband.

Ukraine, direct-to-cell, and debris

Starlink was activated in Ukraine in 2022 at the government's request and is used for communications, energy infrastructure, and military applications. SpaceX said it restricted use on weapons, and the US Department of Defense signed a contract in June 2023 to finance Starlink use in Ukraine (Wikipedia: Starlink). The episode showed that a commercial constellation can become strategic infrastructure.

The company also expanded into direct-to-cell service, rebranded "Starlink Mobile" in March 2026, which supports text messaging on ordinary phones through partners such as T-Mobile in the United States. Meanwhile, a constellation of more than 10,000 satellites raises real questions about orbital crowding, which our piece on AI and space debris tracking explores.

The competition, vehicle by vehicle

SpaceX is not alone, but its rivals have had a hard 2026. The table sets out current figures.

Vehicle	Operator	Payload to LEO	Status as of October 2026
Falcon 9	SpaceX	22,800 kg expendable; about 17,500 kg reusable	697 launches; booster reuse record 37 flights
Falcon Heavy	SpaceX	63,800 kg expendable; 30,000 kg reusable	Operational (14 launches on Wikipedia's comparison page)
Starship Block 3	SpaceX	100,000 kg (design target)	14 test flights; first orbital flight September 28, 2026
New Glenn	Blue Origin	45,000 kg	Three launches; vehicle destroyed in a static-fire test May 28, 2026
Vulcan Centaur	United Launch Alliance	27,200 kg	Four launches; launches paused after a second booster anomaly in February 2026
Ariane 6	Arianespace	About 10,350 kg (A62); about 21,500 kg (A64)	Nine launches; first flight July 9, 2024
Neutron	Rocket Lab	Up to 15,000 kg expendable	Not yet flown; debut pushed to 2027 or later

Sources: Wikipedia articles on Falcon 9, Starship, New Glenn, Vulcan Centaur, Ariane 6, Neutron, and the orbital launch system comparison.

Blue Origin: a landing, then a setback

New Glenn reached orbit on its first launch on January 16, 2025, though the booster was lost on descent. On November 13, 2025, it launched NASA's ESCAPADE mission and landed its first stage on a ship. On April 19, 2026, it flew a reused first stage for the first time, but an upper-stage problem left its satellite in an unusable orbit. Then on May 28, 2026, a vehicle exploded during a static fire test at its Florida pad, heavily damaging the site, with repairs that could take over a year (Wikipedia: New Glenn). That leaves SpaceX with fewer flying heavy-lift American competitors in the near term.

ULA, Arianespace, and Rocket Lab

Vulcan flew four times, with solid-booster nozzle problems in October 2024 and February 2026 that the core stage compensated for, and the Space Force paused Vulcan launches for national security missions until the issues are resolved (Wikipedia: Vulcan Centaur). Europe's Ariane 6 has flown nine times through August 27, 2026, with eight successes and one partial failure, but it is expendable (Wikipedia: Ariane 6). Rocket Lab's Neutron, a medium-lift reusable rocket, has not flown, and Wikipedia's summary of an October 14, 2026 announcement says a tank-dome manufacturing issue pushed the debut to 2027 (Wikipedia: Neutron).

China, the Artemis Accords, and the rules of the Moon

China's program is the other half of the race. According to Wikipedia's summary, China plans its first crewed lunar landing in 2029 or 2030, using the Mengzhou spacecraft and Lanyue lander launched separately on two Long March 10 rockets that rendezvous in lunar orbit, a plan described by a China Manned Space Agency official on July 12, 2023. Chang'e-6 landed in the South Pole-Aitken basin on June 1, 2024, and returned the first far-side samples on June 25, 2024. Chang'e-7, a south-polar resource mission, was scheduled for August 23 to 24, 2026, but the China Manned Space Agency said the probe did not meet launch conditions and gave no new date, and Chang'e-8 is listed for 2028 (Wikipedia: Chinese Lunar Exploration Program).

China and Russia announced a joint International Lunar Research Station in 2021, and in April 2023 China announced an organization for it, with members including South Africa, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Venezuela, Pakistan, and Egypt. Construction at the lunar south pole is planned to start from 2031. A rover already on the far side, Yutu-2, is covered in our article on Yutu-2 rover findings.

On the US side, the Artemis Accords, established by NASA and the State Department in 2020 as principles for civil space activity, had 77 signatories as of October 19, 2026, when Uzbekistan became the 77th (NASA: Artemis Accords). The two camps are organizing around different frameworks, which is why the Moon has become a standards contest as well as an engineering one.

The commercial Moon: small landers, mixed results

NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program buys rides to the Moon from private companies. The record so far is mixed, which is typical of a new industry.

Mission	Company	Date	Outcome
Peregrine Mission One	Astrobotic	Launched January 8, 2024	Failure; propellant leak prevented a landing attempt
IM-1 (Odysseus)	Intuitive Machines	Launched February 15, 2024	Partial failure; first CLPS landing, but the lander tipped
Blue Ghost Mission 1	Firefly Aerospace	Landed March 2, 2025	Success; first fully successful CLPS landing
IM-2 (Athena)	Intuitive Machines	Launched February 27, 2025	Failure; the lander tipped during landing

Source: Wikipedia: Commercial Lunar Payload Services. The same page lists a June 30, 2026 award of four additional missions for late 2028 worth nearly $600 million combined, and a Griffin Mission I planned for November 2026 on a Falcon Heavy.

Asteroid mining, once a headline item, remains a longer-term idea whose economics are examined in asteroid mining economics explained. The nearer-term money is in launch, satellites, and lunar delivery.

What the numbers do not tell you

"Starship has proved full reusability." Not yet. The booster has been caught three times, but the ship has not been caught or reflown, and the last tower catch listed was Flight 8 in March 2025.

"Falcon 9 is 95 percent cheaper than the Shuttle." The comparison depends on which Shuttle cost you use and whether you compare price or cost. Our arithmetic gives roughly a 15- to 20-fold gap in list-price terms.

"A Starship Moon landing is around the corner." The mission needs in-orbit refueling that has not been demonstrated, a lander that has not been built in flight form, and, per NASA's current plan, a landing on Artemis IV in 2028 at the earliest.

"SpaceX has no competition." It has competitors with real hardware, but in 2026 several are grounded or delayed. That could change, and the Chinese program is on a clear timeline.

"Starlink is just satellite internet." It is also a revenue engine, a direct-to-cell project, and a piece of strategic infrastructure.

For the wider picture of recent missions, see the most important space missions of the 2020s. A short list of questions can help sort claims in this field.

• Is the number a price, a cost, or a goal?
• Has the capability been flown, or only tested on the ground?
• Is the schedule the company's, NASA's, or an independent review's?
• What was the failure rate, and how many flights is it based on?

Frequently asked questions

Q: How many times has Starship flown? A: Fourteen times as of September 28, 2026, according to Wikipedia's launch list, which counts nine successes and five failures. Flight 14 was the first orbital flight and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, though one ship engine shut down early.

Q: Has SpaceX caught a Super Heavy booster? A: Yes. The booster was caught by the launch tower on Flight 5 (October 13, 2024), Flight 7 (January 16, 2025), and Flight 8 (March 6, 2025). Later flights tried other landing profiles, and a ship catch has not been attempted.

Q: Is Artemis III still a Moon landing? A: No. NASA now describes Artemis III as a crewed low Earth orbit demonstration targeted for 2027, testing docking with commercial landers. The first crewed landing is planned for Artemis IV, targeted for early 2028 per Wikipedia's summary.

Q: How cheap is Falcon 9 compared with older rockets? A: Its 2026 list price is $74 million, or about $3,200 to $4,200 per kilogram depending on payload mass. Dividing the Shuttle's average program cost of about $1.5 billion per flight by 23,000 kilograms gives about $65,000 per kilogram, though that mixes price and cost.

Q: How big is Starlink? A: About 10,413 satellites in orbit as of June 2026 and about 12 million subscribers. The article's source lists 2025 revenue of $11.4 billion and operating income of $4.4 billion.

Q: Why does Starship need refueling to reach the Moon? A: Fuel needs grow exponentially with the speed change required, so a vehicle that reaches Earth orbit has too little propellant left to go on to the Moon with a heavy payload. Tanker flights would fill an orbital depot, and estimates of the number needed range from about four to the high teens.

Q: What is China's plan for the Moon? A: A crewed landing in 2029 or 2030 using the Mengzhou spacecraft and Lanyue lander on two Long March 10 rockets, and a south-pole research station with Russia and other partners from 2031.

The takeaway

The new space race is mostly a contest of cadence. SpaceX has flown Falcon 9 697 times and has made reuse routine, which funds Starlink, which in turn funds Starship. That loop is the company's real advantage, more than any single rocket. Starship's 14 flights show rapid learning, with a first orbital flight in September 2026, but they also show that full reuse and in-orbit refueling remain unproven.

The political race has changed shape at the same time. NASA's decision to turn Artemis III into an Earth-orbit test, with the first landing pushed to Artemis IV, is an admission that the lander and refueling schedule drives the whole program, while China's crewed-landing target of 2029 or 2030 keeps the pressure on. For anyone following this field, the practical habit is to separate what has flown from what has been promised, to date every figure, and to notice that the claim "first" often matters less than the claim "again."

---

Sources

• NASA, Artemis II mission page: nasa.gov/mission/artemis-ii
• NASA, Artemis III mission page (accessed October 2026): nasa.gov/mission/artemis-iii
• NASA, "As Artemis Moves Forward, NASA Picks SpaceX to Land Next Americans on Moon," April 16, 2021: nasa.gov
• NASA, Artemis Accords: nasa.gov/artemis-accords
• Launch and program data compiled from Wikipedia: List of Starship launches, SpaceX Starship, Starship HLS, Falcon 9, Starlink, Space Shuttle program, New Glenn, Vulcan Centaur, Ariane 6, Neutron, Commercial Lunar Payload Services, and Chinese Lunar Exploration Program

Figures marked "calculated" are our own arithmetic from the cited inputs. Schedules and counts change quickly; verify against the operator's current announcements before relying on them.

---

Read next:

• SpaceX Reusable Rockets: How They Work and Why They Changed Everything
• The History of Space Exploration: From Sputnik to Artemis
• Mars Rovers Explained: From Sojourner to Perseverance