SpaceX appears to have done all but 100 launches this year.
On Thursday night, the launch company sent two more rockets into orbit from Florida. One of them, the Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful rocket in commercial use, was launched by the U.S. military from the launch pad at NASA Kennedy Space Center at 8:07 p.m. ET (1:07 a.m. UTC). Carried his X-37B spaceplane. Less than three hours later, at 11:01 p.m. ET (4:01 a.m. UTC), SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 launcher carried 23 Starlink internet satellites several miles away. I took off to the south.
Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters and Falcon 9’s first stage were returned to Earth for reuse.
These were SpaceX’s last launches in 2023. SpaceX will end the year with 98 flights, including 1 Falcon 991, five Falcon Heavy rockets and two test launches of its massive new Super Heavy Starship rocket. These flights were distributed among his four launch pads in Florida, California, and Texas.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has set a goal of 100 launches this year, surpassing the company’s previous record of 61 launches in 2022. For a while, it looked like SpaceX was on track to accomplish the feat, but bad weather continued. And technical issues with the last Falcon Heavy launch of the year prevented the company from completing his 100th flight.
King of “Upmass”
“Congratulations to the entire SpaceX Falcon team.” A record-breaking 96 launches are scheduled for 2023! ” said John Edwards, SpaceX vice president of Falcon rockets. Social media platform. “I remember when Elon Musk first set out the goal of 100 launches as a thought experiment, with the goal of unlocking ideas about how to accelerate the Falcon at every level of production and launch. Masu.
“Just a few years later, here we are,” Edwards wrote. “I’m so proud to be working with the best team on the planet and can’t wait to see what we accomplish next year.”
It’s important to take a step back and put these numbers in context. No other family of orbital-class rockets has made more than 63 flights in a year. SpaceX’s Falcon rocket currently exceeds that number by about 50 percent. SpaceX’s competitors in the U.S., including United Launch Alliance and Rocket Lab, operated far fewer flights in 2023. ULA had three missions, and Rocket Lab launched 10 small electron boosters.
Nearly two-thirds of SpaceX’s missions this year were dedicated to delivering satellites into orbit for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network, which currently includes more than 5,000 spacecraft.
SpaceX also launched five missions with a Falcon Heavy rocket created by integrating three Falcon 9 rocket boosters. Highlights of SpaceX’s 2023 Falcon launch schedule included a three-person crew mission to the International Space Station and the launch of NASA’s Psyche mission to explore metallic asteroids.
This year, SpaceX’s Falcon rockets delivered a total of about 1,200 tons, or more than 2.6 million pounds, of payload mass into orbit. This “massive mass” is equivalent to almost three International Space Stations. Most of this consisted of mass-produced Starlink satellites.