SpaceX is making a surprising year for its Falcon rockets with 97 launches closed. This is what the company saw last year 60 launches a big increase compared to The company owned by Elon Musk is working hard to break this record. Two rockets, 3 hours apart threw it.
SpaceX launched a Falcon Heavy and a Falcon 9
On Thursday night, the launch company sent two more rockets into orbit from Florida. One of them is the US army X-37B space shuttle The world’s most powerful rocket in commercial service, carrying it from the launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Falcon Heavy was. Less than three hours later, SpaceX’s powerful Falcon 9 The launcher took off with a payload of 23 Starlink Internet satellites.
After launch, Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters and Falcon 9’s first stage landed back on Earth for reuse. These were SpaceX’s final launches of 2023. SpaceX closed 2023 with 98 flights, including 91 of the Falcon 9, 5 of the Falcon Heavy rocket and two test launches of the new Super Heavy-Starship rocket. These flights took place at four launch pads in Florida, California and Texas.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has set a goal of 100 launches this year, down from the company’s previous record of 61 launches in 2022. For a while, it looked like the company was on track to achieve this success. But numerous bad weather conditions and technical problems with the last Falcon Heavy launch of the year prevented the company from reaching 100 flights.
New record from SpaceX in 2023!
SpaceX, headed by Elon Musk, broke a record with 97 successful launches this year. So what are the 2024 goals?
Almost two-thirds of SpaceX’s missions this year are dedicated to delivering satellites into orbit for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network, which currently has more than 5,000 spacecraft. The company has also launched five missions with its Falcon Heavy rocket, which is created by combining three Falcon 9 rocket boosters.
Highlights of the company’s 2023 Falcon launch schedule included three crewed missions to the International Space Station and the launch of NASA’s Psyche mission to explore a metallic asteroid.
In total, SpaceX’s Falcon rockets have carried more than nearly 1,200 tons of payload into orbit this year. This “mass” is almost 3 International Space Stations is equivalent. Most of these consisted of mass-produced Starlink satellites.