It is far too soon to mention retirement, but astute observers of the space industry have noticed SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket is not launching as often as it used to.
The decline is modest so far, and it does not signal any problem at SpaceX or with the Falcon 9. Rather, it is a manifestation of SpaceX’s eagerness to shift focus to the much larger Starship rocket, an enabler of what the company wants to do in space: missions to land on the Moon and Mars, orbital data centers, and next-gen Starlink.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX conducted 165 launches with the Falcon 9 rocket (no Falcon Heavy missions) last
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