SpaceX to conduct 300 missions in 5 years: CEO Elon Musk says

New Delhi : After the lift off of Falcon 9 rocket SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has announced to set over 300 space missions in next five years. The recently launched Falcon 9 rocket has carried Bangladesh’s first communications satellite into orbit from Florida's Cape Canaveral.

The "Block 5" booster, the final extensive upgrade to SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch vehicle, was launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre on its maiden flight on Friday. The first stage of the mission was successfully recovered, landing on the "Of Course I Still Love You" offshore droneship, about eight minutes after the launch, at an unmanned platform vessel in the Pacific Ocean.

"SpaceX will probably build 30 to 40 rocket cores for 300 missions over 5 years. Then the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) takes over & Falcon retires. Goal of BFR is to enable anyone to move to moon, Mars & eventually outer planets," Musk tweeted on May 13.

The "Block-5" booster is engineered to be capable of 10 or more flights with very limited refurbishment as SpaceX continues to endeavour for fast reusability and enormously high reliability. "Rate at which things are getting more bizarre appears to be increasing. In the future, it will seem bizarre that we used to crash rockets into the ocean instead of reusing them," Musk added.

Falcon 9 rocket has given hopes to bring astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) in the future. The changes made may make engineers easier to renovate its first stages for more flights.

SpaceX rocket taken off has improved its helium tanks submerged in liquid oxygen propellant tanks in the second stage. The helium tanks were ruptured in a pre-launch test on September 1, 2016, causing an explosion.