Friend is kind of a wrong concept for inanimate objects, but after writing stories about booster B1067 for over five years, I've started to feel like it's an old friend. The kind of friend you know you can always count on when you need something.
B1067 set a new record for SpaceX this morning, with its 5:25 AM EDT (0925 UTC) launch of Starlink 10-42 mission. The record launch is the 36th flight for B1067, and if it seems like its last record flight wasn't long ago, you're exactly right. The record 35th flight was June 8, 31 days ago.
While completely different sized ships, requiring completely different levels of work to prepare for a flight, the highest number of flights of a reusable ship was NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery. Discovery flew 39 times, and the one month turnaround between flights seems to imply that someone at SpaceX is following that record and wants to ensure that B1067 becomes the world leader in number of flights. If that's the case, four flights sets the new record, which could be by the end of November. Four months from now.
Booster 1067 soars near the Moon as seen from the Kennedy Space Center during the Starlink 10-42 mission on July 9, 2026. Image: John Pisani/Spaceflight Now
B1067, began flying in June 2021 with the company’s 22nd Dragon flight as part of the Commercial Resupply Services-2 contract with NASA. It went onto fly the Crew-3 and Crew-4 missions as well as 24 batches of Starlink satellites.
A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1067 landed on the drone ship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’, positioned in the Atlantic Ocean. This was the 160th landing for this vessel and the 635th booster landing to date for SpaceX.
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