Falcon 9 Rocket Launch Coloring Page: Free PDF Sheet

Falcon 9: The Rocket That Learned to Land

Named for Nine Engines and a Fictional Ship

Falcon 9 gets its name from the nine Merlin engines clustered at the base of its first stage, while "Falcon" itself is a nod to the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, an early inspiration SpaceX founder Elon Musk cited for the company's naming style. The rocket first reached orbit in June 2010, becoming the first privately funded liquid-fuel rocket to do so.

The Octaweb: Nine Engines in One Ring

The nine Merlin engines sit in a circular arrangement nicknamed the octaweb, with eight engines forming an outer ring around a single center engine, a layout that also lets the rocket survive the loss of up to two outer engines mid-flight and still complete its mission. That built-in redundancy is a major reason Falcon 9 has flown hundreds of missions with such a strong success record.

A First Stage Built to Come Back

Unlike most rockets before it, the Falcon 9 first stage is designed to separate, flip around, reignite its engines, and fly itself back down to a landing pad or an ocean droneship instead of burning up or splashing into the sea. SpaceX achieved its first successful landing of an orbital-class rocket booster in December 2015, a milestone many aerospace engineers had considered impractical only a few years earlier.

Grid Fins for Steering Through the Sky

Small folding grid fins near the top of the first stage swing out during descent and pivot to steer the falling booster toward its landing target, working alongside cold-gas thrusters that flip the rocket right-side up after stage separation. These fins stay folded flat against the body during launch, then open into their crosshatched shape only once the booster begins its return trip.

Turning Rockets Into Reusable Vehicles

Before Falcon 9, nearly every orbital rocket was thrown away after a single flight, but SpaceX has now landed and reflown the same Falcon 9 boosters more than twenty times each on some vehicles, dramatically cutting the cost of reaching orbit. That reusability record helped Falcon 9 become the most frequently launched American orbital rocket in history.

Carrying Astronauts, Not Just Cargo

Falcon 9 became the first commercial rocket certified to carry NASA astronauts when it launched the Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station in May 2020, ending nearly a decade in which the United States had relied on Russian rockets for crewed launches. That mission, called Demo-2, restored American human spaceflight capability from American soil for the first time since the Space Shuttle retired in 2011.

Kerosene and Liquid Oxygen Power Every Launch

Falcon 9's nine first-stage Merlin engines burn a combination of refined kerosene fuel and super-cold liquid oxygen, a propellant pairing chosen partly because it is affordable, easy to handle on the ground, and well understood after decades of use in earlier American rockets. Each Merlin engine can throttle its thrust up and down during flight, a capability that helps the booster fly a smoother ascent and land far more precisely during descent.