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The company's main rocket has been supporting missions since 2010, and it's now set another impressive record. //
On Thursday, SpaceX announced via Twitter that the Falcon 9 is now the most-flown operational rocket in the United States, having undertaken 85 flights. //
It marks a key milestone for the Falcon 9, which on Thursday also marked the 10th anniversary of its first flight. //
The Falcon 9 set the stage for SpaceX to move further. It measures 230 feet tall, 12 feet in diameter, and weighs 1.2 million pounds. It's capable of transporting over 50,000 pounds to low Earth orbit. As the name suggests, the rocket uses nine Merlin engines versus the single Merlin engine used with the Falcon 1. That gives it more than 1.7 million pounds of thrust at sea level. //
But perhaps Falcon 9's most important improvement was its reusability. That enables SpaceX to recuperate around $46.5 million of the estimated $62 million price tag associated with these flights. SpaceX first attempted to land a Falcon 9 booster in 2013, but only succeeded for the first time the following year. By 2017 it was landing 15 cores per year. It has landed the Falcon 9 booster 46 times, and reflown it 31 times.