SpaceX launched its 97th Falcon mission of the year on Oct. 15, surpassing its 2023 annual flight record.
With more than two months left in the year, SpaceX has surpassed its 2023 record of 96 Falcon flights, despite three temporary suspensions to address technical issues.
In January, SpaceX said it was aiming for 144 Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches in 2024, or 12 per month. “The launch system (pads, recovery, flight hardware) needs to be capable of 13 per month so we can play catchup when planned maintenance, debacles and weather inevitably slow us down,” SpaceX Vice President for Launch Kiko Dontchev wrote on X at the time.
SpaceX racked up its 97th and 98th flights of the year with a pair of Starlink deployment missions launching 2 hr. 11 min. apart from Florida and California.
In addition to more Starlink launches, SpaceX is expected to deliver the final batch of OneWeb’s first-generation broadband satellites into orbit later this month. A date for the launch from Vandenberg SFB, California, has not yet been announced.
The annual launch tally does not include the three Starship-Super Heavy flight tests, the latest of which occurred on Oct. 13. Integrated Flight Test-5 (IFT-5)—which included the return of the Super Heavy booster to its launchpad for a midair catch in a pair of mechanical arms mounted on the gantry—was the first to follow the flight plan as submitted to the FAA. That bodes well for a quicker turnaround from the FAA for IFT-6, depending on what SpaceX proposes to do for Starship’s next shakedown cruise.
Beyond SpaceX, Blue Origin still is targeting the debut launch of its partly reusable New Glenn system by year-end, though the company has been very quiet since the Sept. 23 hot-fire test of the booster’s upper stage. The vehicle is to be reintegrated ahead of a static engine firing of the first stage’s seven BE-4 engines, paving the way to launch.
Blue Origin also is preparing to debut a second suborbital New Shepard vehicle with an uncrewed flight test from west Texas. Launch attempts on Oct. 7 and 13 were scrubbed due to technical issues.
Also on hold: the return of the four-member SpaceX Crew-8 astronauts from the International Space Station due to unacceptable weather/sea conditions at splashdown sites off of Florida’s east and west coasts.
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