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SpaceX plans to fly its Falcon 9 rockets as much as 20 times each, according to details shared by the firm's vice president for build and reliability, Bill Gerstenmaier, earlier today. Mr. Gerstenmaier's comments came during a press conference after his firm and Axiom Space completed a flight readiness review for the later's Ax-2 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The Ax-2 will fly a private crew to the orbiting space laboratory, and it will be the second mission of its kind. SpaceX plans to increase its launch cadence this year significantly, and the new reusability metric for the Falcon 9 will initially be for the firm's Starlink missions.

SpaceX, NASA & Axiom Space Clear Ax-2 Mission's Flight Readiness Review

Unlike most of SpaceX's crewed launches, the Ax-2 mission will mark a rare occasion when the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage booster lands on land instead of a drone ship. While SpaceX can land the rocket on land, the decision to do so depends on the requirements for the mission and the amount of fuel needed since a land landing requires the rocket to fly back further to the site.

However, during today's event, Mr. Gerstenmaier shared that from now on, SpaceX will land all of its rockets for the crewed missions on land. He added that the decision follows SpaceX's evaluation of data from the Starlink missions, which have shown that the rocket can meet the performance requirement.

According to him:

The performance really comes from using the same systems we've been using before. And we've been able on Starlink missions to show that we have extra capability available for us to go ahead and utilize for this mission. We've always had this kind of capability before, we just weren't sure that we would always get the performance but the number of Falcon flights we've flown have allowed us to say that performance is available and can be used where it's needed to be used moving forward.

A Falcon 9 booster lands for the 13th time in March. Image: SpaceX

Another crucial detail shared at the event was SpaceX's plans further to push the boundaries of the Falcon 9 rocket. Right now, the most times that a Falcon 9 rocket has flown and landed is fifteen, with SpaceX meeting this milestone in December last year.

However, the firm might exceed this soon, as according to Mr. Gerstenamier, it is looking to certify the Falcon 9 for a maximum of 20 flights. Responding to a question asking him if SpaceX would prefer to increase its fleet of Falcon 9 boosters given its optimistic targets for 2023, he responded:

Yeah I don't know the exact number of boosters that we have available but we're able to fly our manifest pretty straight forward. We're in the process of certifying for Starlink missions booster re-flights up to twenty times. And that gives us a lot of capability to continue to reuse boosters, and continue to keep flying. Again I think we are able to meet our manifest plus with the boosters we've got in working, and we're kicking up a little bit some of our stage one production here a little bit to support some of our heavy missions. We have a couple of Falcon Heavy missions, and those are typically expendable so we need to have boosters ready for those. But I think we have plenty of boosters ready to go fly.

The Ax-2 mission will use a brand new booster and is expected to take to the skies on Sunday, 5:37 pm Eastern time from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Veteran NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson will head it and include commercial astronaut John Shoffner and Saudi astronauts Ali AlQarni and Rayyanah Barnawi - all of whom will mark their first spaceflight.