SpaceX misses Elon Musk’s goal of 100 Falcon 9 launches in 2023

With only 11 days left this year, it is clear that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will not be able to achieve his stated goal of achieving 100 Falcon 9 launches by 2023. Nonetheless, the company’s achievements during the year were impressive, and 2024 is expected to be flat. More eye-catching.

Monday, December 18, Falcon 9 roll out It took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying 23 Starlink V2-mini satellites.This mission is SpaceX’s 88th Falcon 9 launch in 2023, and also marks the The 254th consecutive successful flight Build an extremely reliable rocket.

The only weird thing about this launch is that it occurred 11 days after the previous Falcon 9 mission, marking the longest gap between Falcon 9 launches in 2023, according to to space news.That previous taskslaunched from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, was launched on December 8, sending another batch of Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit.

The unusual gap was caused by a series of developments, including severe weather in Florida that delayed a Starlink launch and ground equipment issues that affected the Falcon Heavy rocket’s launch of the Space Force’s X-37B space shuttle at Kennedy Space Center. The rescheduling of Falcon 9 launches to Vandenberg from December 14 to 28, possibly to make way for the German SARah 2 and 3 satellites, may also have played a role.

Over the course of the year, SpaceX maintained an impressive average of launching a Falcon 9 rocket roughly every four days or so.That’s a hot launch pace, but not enough for the company to achieve Elon Musk’s 100 Falcon 9 launches in a calendar year point out as the company’s August 2022 target. As time passes and the reality of the upcoming launch manifest becomes apparent, it becomes clear that SpaceX will not be able to achieve this ambitious goal.

According to the flight schedule maintained by SpaceX, SpaceX will launch up to four more Falcon 9 rockets in 2023 next space flight. That would bring the total number of Falcon 9 launches this year to 92, eight fewer than Musk’s goal. Including four completed Falcon Heavy launches and another planned for December 28, the total number of orbital launches should reach 97. SpaceX also conducted two Starship tests in 2023, but the experimental giant rocket never entered orbit and is still far from entering commercial operation. .

The Falcon 9’s expected number of launches is 92, which is nothing to underestimate, a feat that is largely due to the rocket’s reusability. Since its debut in 2010, SpaceX has recovered its Falcon 9 rocket more than 250 times. In 2022, SpaceX set a record: Launch your trusty rocket 61 times.

According to SpaceNews, SpaceX continues to dominate the industry, responsible for nearly 50% of the world’s orbital launch attempts. The second best American company is Rocket Lab, which completed 10 Electron launches in 2023.

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Looking ahead, SpaceX’s ambitions will be even higher in 2024. At a Senate Space Subcommittee hearing in October, Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of construction and flight reliability, said: explain The company aims to increase flight rates to approximately 12 flights per month. If this ambitious goal is achieved, the Falcon will fly a staggering 144 times throughout the year. It goes without saying that SpaceX will continue to make waves in the aerospace industry over the next year and beyond.

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