A little more than seven years have passed since the Falcon 9 rocket made its first successful landing back on Earth. That was just SpaceX's 20th launch of the Falcon 9 rocket. Monday morning's launch was the 207th overall flight of the rocket. For a time, after that first landing, SpaceX had several misses as it continued to experiment with landing on a drone ship, as well as enduring a few mishaps.

However, since a drone ship landing failure in February 2021, SpaceX had reeled off 100 consecutive successful booster landings. Monday morning's return made for lucky no. 101.