Recovered fairings from Starlink v1-12 (Credit: Stephen Marr)

SpaceX has been working for years towards recovering and reusing payload fairings. Fairing is a two-piece protective shell made of aluminum and carbon composite at the tip of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. Its purpose is to protect the payload from acoustic and atmospheric effects during launch. A Falcon fairing is almost 14 meters tall. Due to its size and the materials used, fairing production is time-consuming and costly (SpaceX produces the fairings in-house and the total cost for two fairing halves is 5 or 6 million dollars). So it is no wonder that the company would like to recover the fairings in order to use them repeatedly, just as it does with its rocket boosters.

Each fairing half is equipped with a steerable parafoil and small thrusters which allow the fairings to reenter the atmosphere intact and guide them toward a recovery zone. In the past, they attempted to land on modified ships Ms. Tree and Ms. Chief equipped with large nets. But this method had low success rate, so the fairings now land in the ocean and are then recovered by ships.

This list of fairing recovery attempts recognizes three generations of fairings: v1.0, v2.0 and v2.5. These are unofficial designations and there might actually be fewer or more fairing types. Version 1.0 was used until early 2018 with only one fairing half containing parachutes. Version 2.0 was used for most of 2018, was slightly wider and both of its halves could be recovered. Version 2.5 is the most recent type which added metal thermal protection on the tip of the fairing. But there may have been additional changes and improvements made since then.

» Much more detailed article about fairing recovery «

Changelog:

• Jan 18, 2025 – Added information about the NROL-153, Starlink 12-11, Starlink 12-4 and Transporter-12 fairing recoveries
• Jan 11, 2025 – Added information about the Thuraya 4-NGS, Starlink 6-71 and 12-11 fairing recoveries; 2024 recoveries moved to a separate page
• Jan 4, 2025 – Added information about the Starlink 11-3, Astranis Block 2 and Starlink 12-6 fairing recoveries; fixed some errors in fairing recoveries from 2023
• Dec 27, 2024 – Added information about the RRT-1, NROL-149, O3b mPOWER 4, Bandwagon-2 and Starlink 12-2 fairing recoveries
• Dec 15, 2024 – Added information about the SXM-9 and Starlink 9-14, 12-5 and 11-2 fairing recoveries
• Dec 7, 2024 – Added information about the Optus-X, GSAT-N2, NROL-126 and Starlink 9-12, 6-66, 9-13, 12-1, 6-76, 6-65 and 6-70 fairing recoveries
• Nov 16, 2024 – Added information about the KoreaSat 6A, Starlink 6-69, 9-11 and 6-68 fairing recoveries

Legend: YES means the fairing successfully landed in the net. YES means the fairing missed the net but was then recovered from the ocean intact. YES means the fairing was recovered intact after a PLANNED ocean landing. NO means that the fairing wasn’t recovered intact (regardless of planned landing method). ♺ indicates a reused fairing (asterisk means that only one fairing half was reused).