SpaceX
SpaceX aiming for 150 flights in 2024, 96 missions completed in the past year
SpaceX today set a New Year’s resolution and announced an aim to complete 150 flights in 2024, which is a huge increase in new missions.
SpaceX Founder and CEO, Elon Musk said that in 2023, his company launched 96 missions. This includes a SpaceX Dragon vehicle with 12 astronauts to the international space station and two Starship test flights.
Through 2023, SpaceX launched customer missions including Transporter-6, OneWeb 16, USSF-67, GPS II-06, Inmarsat-6 F2, Crew-6, OneWeb 17, SES-18 and 19, SDA Tranche 0A, Intelsat 40e/TEMPO, Transporter-7, O3b mPOWER 3 and 4, ViaSat 3 Americas, Iridium NEXT/OneWeb, Transporter-8, SATRIA, Euclid, Jupiter 3, NASA Psyche, Transporter 9, O3b mPOWER 5 and 6, SARah 2 and 3 and USSF-52.
SpaceX Founder and CEO, Elon Musk addressing SpaceX missions and advancement in 2023 at Starbase (Image Source – X/Twitter)
The rest of the missions are heavily directed at growing the Starlink satellites. To be mentioned, the company used Falcon Heavy for 5 missions overall.
SpaceX heavy ambitious rocket – Starship also conducted its first integrated flight test in April, followed by a second test in November.
This number of launches is the most in the world by any space transportation company.
In 2023, SpaceX completed 96 successful missions, safely flew 12 more astronauts to orbit, launched two flight tests of Starship, and more than doubled the number of people around the world connected by @Starlink.
Watch @elonmusk deliver a company update: pic.twitter.com/7zeTlQLgp9
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 12, 2024
2024:
Moving forward, SpaceX is aiming for a massive 150 flights in 2024, which is about over 50% more launches than in 2023. In the past two weeks, the company has sent three missions into low-Earth orbit and there are more planned for the rest of the month.
However, to achieve this new aim, SpaceX will need to arrange schedules more frequently than in 2023.