RatSat

Three flights had failed. By the fourth, the company's funds were nearly gone, and another failure would have closed the program. On 28 September 2008, a Falcon 1 lifted from Omelek Island in Kwajalein Atoll, carrying a 165 kg mass simulator — designated RatSat — into low Earth orbit. No operational payload rode along; the boilerplate stood in for a satellite that would come later, once the machine had proven itself.

The fourth flight did not fail. That single result was sufficient: it established Falcon 1 as the first privately funded, privately developed liquid-fuelled rocket to achieve orbit, and it kept the enterprise intact long enough to receive a NASA cargo contract that winter.