Another communications satellite was launched on Tuesday, and the Falcon 9 rocket celebrated its 50th launch. According to a report by Ars Technica on March 5, Beijing time, SpaceX launched its first Falcon 9 rocket in June 2010 - less than 10 years ago. On Tuesday local time, SpaceX will launch its Falcon 9 rocket for the 50th time. As early as Tuesday, SpaceX will launch a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to put the Hispasat 30W-6 communications satellite into geostationary transfer orbit. The launch window for this mission is 2 hours. Picture: The first launch of the Falcon 9 rocket in 2010. Currently, it is unclear whether SpaceX will try to recover the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket during this launch event. The Hispasat 30W-6 communications satellite weighs slightly more than 6 tons, which is about 0.5 tons heavier than any payload previously launched by Falcon 9 to the geostationary transfer orbit. Therefore, the rocket needs to consume almost all of the fuel it carries before it can send the payload into the geostationary transfer orbit - which will greatly increase the difficulty of recovering the first stage rocket. Assuming the Hispasat mission launches next week, the time it takes SpaceX to complete 50 launches of an orbital rocket is still relatively short: 7 years and 9 months. In comparison, it took 9 years and 7 months for the Atlas-5 rocket to reach 50 launches, and 11 years and 5 months for the space shuttle. Last year, SpaceX started to enter its best form, successfully launching 18 rockets - twice the highest number of launches in a year for the Atlas-5 rocket (2014 and 2015) and the space shuttle (1985). SpaceX executives have said they expect more than 20 Falcon 9 rocket launches this year. Relationship with the Challenger Space Shuttle As the number of Falcon 9 rocket launches is about to reach 50, we need to speculate on how the space shuttle program would have developed if the Challenger space shuttle had not crashed in 1986. Before 1986, the space shuttle had flown nine times and once in 1986. It is widely believed that NASA will double the number of space shuttle flights in 1986 compared with 1985, especially when a new launch site in California comes into use. collectSPACE.com editor Robert Pearlman said, If it were not for the Challenger space shuttle crash, military and intelligence agencies would not be quick to use disposable launch vehicles, especially as the U.S. Air Force is about to increase its use of the space shuttle. Without the Challenger crash, the White House may have allowed the space shuttle to continue launching commercial satellites. This means that Lockheed Martin and Boeing may not develop modern versions of the Atlas and Delta series rockets. Perlman said, Without these changes, it is a question whether there is a large enough market to maintain the number of launches of the Atlas and Delta series rockets. If there is no basis for a commercial space launch market, it is also a question whether SpaceX will be born, or whether it will develop as fast as it is now