SpaceX completed its 700th Falcon rocket mission on Sept. 13, deploying the final three satellites for Luxembourg-based SES' O3b mPOWER constellation. A Falcon 9 lifted off at 2:49 p.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The first stage booster B1080 landed on the drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas" less than nine minutes after launch, marking its 29th flight. That reusability cadence is the core of SpaceX's competitive advantage: lower per-flight costs translate directly into pricing pressure on rivals like Arianespace and Blue Origin, which still rely on expendable rockets or are building reusable systems from scratch.
The Falcon 9 has accounted for the vast majority of the 700 missions since entering service in 2010. Through Sept. 13, SpaceX has executed 107 orbital launches this year alone—105 on Falcon 9, two on Falcon Heavy—demonstrating operational capacity rivals struggle to match.
SES now operates a complete O3b mPOWER constellation of 13 satellites in medium Earth orbit at 5,000 miles altitude, all launched by SpaceX across six missions since December 2022. Each Boeing-built satellite weighs roughly 3,750 pounds. SES markets the constellation to enterprises where network downtime carries material business cost—financial services, government, maritime, and energy sectors.
For SES, the economics are straightforward: SpaceX's reusability has made MEO constellation deployment feasible at scale. Competing launch providers face a calculus: match SpaceX's pricing or lose satellite operator customers. That pressure is already reshaping the commercial launch market, favoring operators with proven booster turnaround times over those dependent on expendable vehicles or immature reusable platforms.
