SpaceX is hoping to return the Falcon 9 first stage booster used in its first flight back to active operations on January 14. That’s an impressive turn around time if they can pull it off – roughly six months. SpaceX has reused a Falcon 9 first stage just once, for its March 30 SES-10 mission. The turnaround for that rocket refurbishment took nearly a year, so under six months would be a drastic improvement, as it’ll halve the timeline of the previous effort.
Eventually, SpaceX hopes to fly its Falcon 9 rockets again within 24 hours of use, so that it can pack as many launches as possible into as short a timeframe as possible, in order to maximize its launch capacity and achieve greater economies of scale.
The BulgariaSat-1 mission on June 17 where SpaceX hopes to reuse the used Falcon 9 will take place from the Kennedy Space Center. It was originally slated to occur at the end of last year, but the timing was pushed back as a result of SpaceX’s launch pad pre-flight rocket explosion last September.