A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with the Psyche spacecraft launches from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Oct. 13, 2023.
Chandan Khanna | AFP | Getty Images
Elon Musk’s SpaceX smashed its previous annual record for orbital rocket launches, pulling off 96 successful missions in 2023 at a blistering average launch pace of each 4 days.
SpaceX this yr achieved 91 launches with its Falcon 9 rocket and one other five with the Falcon Heavy, topping its previous annual record of 61 orbital launches in 2022. For context, SpaceX launched Falcon 9 more times this yr than in all the first decade after the rocket’s debut.
Along the way in which this yr, SpaceX landed its 250th orbital rocket booster in addition to launched and landed a single rocket 19 times, continuing to push the boundaries of reusing rockets. This week, SpaceX also set a latest company record for shortest time between orbital launches, at just below three hours, which represents the tightest time between Florida launches since NASA’s Gemini 11 mission in 1966.
What’s more, SpaceX’s launch count for the yr doesn’t include its pair of Starship test flights, which weren’t carrying industrial payloads certain for orbit.
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Jon Edwards, SpaceX vp of Falcon launch vehicles, wrote in a social media post that just just a few years ago, Musk suggested “a goal of 100 launches as a thought experiment.”
“Here we’re. I’m so incredibly proud to work with the perfect team on earth, and so excited to see what we achieve next yr,” Edwards wrote.
SpaceX officials have said the corporate goals to launch as many as 144 Falcon missions in 2024, because it continues to deploy satellites for the Starlink system that drives a significant portion of its $180 billion valuation.
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