This afternoon, SpaceX successfully launched its 32nd Falcon 9 mission of 2022, officially breaking the company’s own record for orbital launches in a single year. And since it’s only July, there’s still plenty of year left to increase that record even further.
SpaceX has been steadily increasing its launch cadence every year, apart from a dip in 2019. By 2021, the company had 31 launches, the most ever, making SpaceX also the supplier most prolific pitching American.
At the start of 2022, SpaceX set an incredibly ambitious goal of launching 52 missions over the course of the year. That number was revealed by a NASA safety advisory panel in January, with a word of caution that SpaceX would still have to strive to maintain safety amid the increased pace. “NASA and SpaceX will have to be careful in 2022 that they don’t fall victim to their own success,” Sandy Magnus, a former NASA astronaut and member of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, said during the January meeting.
there’s still a lot of year left
But so far, SpaceX has stuck to its schedule, with nothing but smooth missions this year. Ironically, SpaceX had initially hoped to launch today’s missions on Thursday, but stopped the countdown shortly after an abort was activated less than a minute before liftoff. It was a rare abort for SpaceX, which has not had to slow down the countdown for many months due to a technical problem. The company was able to launch today, however, after an uninterrupted countdown.
A key factor that allows for such a busy launch schedule is that for most of SpaceX’s launches this year, SpaceX is its own customer. The company is using these launches to flesh out its massive Starlink Internet constellation from space, amassing batches of up to 53 satellites at a time (though numbers vary from launch to launch). Today’s flight from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California put down 46 additional Starlink satellites. The company currently has approximately 2,600 Starlink satellites in orbit.
Even without the Starlink launch, SpaceX has had plenty of other missions to keep the company busy. Thanks to its partnership with NASA, SpaceX regularly sends Dragon capsules, which carry cargo and people, to the International Space Station. The company also has its Transporter missions, in which several small satellites are grouped together and deployed during a single mission. All of this, plus commercial customers and SpaceX launches for the Department of Defense, makes for a busy manifesto.
Almost all of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets that have launched this year have been vehicles that have previously flown, as the company continues to master landing and reusing its rockets. SpaceX also exclusively flies the Block 5 version of its Falcon 9, which is optimized for reuse. Today’s rocket successfully landed on one of SpaceX’s drone spacecraft after liftoff, marking the 125th total landing of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket.
Now that SpaceX has broken its record, the company is still going full steam ahead. Another mission is already scheduled for Sunday, July 24, out of Florida, to launch another batch of Starlink satellites.