On August 18th at 10:30 AM local time, SpaceX launched a new batch of Starlink satellites and a trio of Earth-observing SkySat spacecraft on a rideshare mission from Florida's Space Coast. The flight and subsequent landing of the Falcon 9 booster that launched this mission was its sixth run to space––the first time SpaceX has achieved this.

SpaceX's vision is to make space travel regular and cheap by reusing flown hardware over and over again, like the Milennium Falcon, Falcon 9's namesake. Rapid reuse, according to CEO Elon Musk, would make the extraoridnary costs of both cargo and crew missions dramatically cheaper and enable humans to reach Mars. SpaceX is pushing its reusability goals with every launch (also catching the payload fairings and reusing the Dragons) until they can ultimately consolidate the technology into the upcoming Starship.

Our team was at Cape Canaveral to capture the historic flight.