On June 4, 2010, the Falcon 9 rocket took to the skies for the first time, launching from Cape Canaveral carrying a dummy model of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft. After midnight Eastern time tonight, Elon Musk's space company will attempt to reach another milestone, launching its 50th Falcon 9 from the same launch pad that hosted the maiden flight almost eight years ago. Launch is scheduled for 12:33 a.m. EST on Tuesday, March 6.Since its first flight, the Falcon 9 has grown more than 50 feet and gained some 600,000 lbs. of additional thrust thanks to engine upgrades. Today's Falcon 9 Full Thrust provides a payload capacity of more than 50,000 lbs. to low Earth orbit, while version 1.0 couldn't loft even half that amount back in 2010.In the years since then, Falcon 9 became the first orbital-class rocket in the world that can return for a controlled propulsive landing, by land or by sea, to fly another day. SpaceX pulled off the first successful Falcon 9 first stage landing in December 2015, then relaunched one of its recovered boosters for the first time in March 2017.The 50th launch, with a two-hour launch window starting after midnight on Monday night/Tuesday morning, will carry the Hispasat 30W-6 communications satellite to geostationary transfer orbit. The half-century mark for Falcon 9 represents the accelerated rate that SpaceX has begun to fire off rockets from Florida and California. To hit 50 launches, Falcon 9 will take about seven years and nine months, compared to the nine years and seven months it took the similar-capacity United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket to reach that many launches.Last year, Falcon 9 launched 18 times, more than double the number of launches in 2016, and this year the California-based aerospace company hopes to launch nearly 30 rockets. As SpaceX hits its stride, landing and relaunching Falcon 9s and eating up launch industry market share as it goes, the company plans to keep its foot on the gas pedal to extend its lead in the commercial launch business. Falcon 9 took almost eight years to hit 50 flights, but the rocket, due for one final upgrade to the more powerful Block 5 version, could very well hit 100 launches before 2020.