SpaceX's 1st 'Block 5' Falcon 9 Rocket: The Launch Photos

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View of the grid fins

Amy Thompson/Space.com

A look at the grid fins after the booster's second trip to space. The aerospace company switched materials on the Block 5 variant and now fashion the grid fins out of titanium, so they hold up better to the stresses of launch.

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Amy Thompson
Amy Thompson
Contributing Writer

Amy Thompson is a Florida-based space and science journalist, who joined Space.com as a contributing writer in 2015. She's passionate about all things space and is a huge science and science-fiction geek. Star Wars is her favorite fandom, with that sassy little droid, R2D2 being her favorite. She studied science at the University of Florida, earning a degree in microbiology. Her work has also been published in Newsweek, VICE, Smithsonian, and many more. Now she chases rockets, writing about launches, commercial space, space station science, and everything in between.