On Friday night, SpaceX successfully completed its 99th flight of the year with a Starlink mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
At 7:31 p.m. Eastern time, a Falcon 9 carrying 20 Starlink satellites blasted out from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40.
The Just Read the Instructions droneship’s first-stage rocket completed a downrange recovery touchdown in the Atlantic on its seventeenth flight.
It was the 71st flight from the Space Coast in 2024, just one less than the record-breaking 72 launches in 2023. United Launch Alliance has launched the remaining ones, while SpaceX has flown all but five of those.
There have only been two Falcon Heavy missions this year, with the remainder being Falcon 9 launches.
Along with the other 18 from KSC, this was the 53rd launch from Cape Canaveral.
Together with the two Falcon Heavy missions, SpaceX has performed 33 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California this year, for a total of 97 Falcon 9 launches, including this one.
From its Starbase test site in Boca Chica, Texas, it has also launched three test flights of its in-development Starship and Super Heavy rocket, all of which have reached orbit.
Adding to the success of the March and June missions, last Sunday’s launch included the first on-target controlled landing of the second stage in the Indian Ocean and the first land capture of the Super Heavy booster back at the launch tower.
In 2023, SpaceX completed 98 operational missions, including 91 Falcon 9 and 5 Falcon Heavy missions. The company also attempted two Starship test flights, both of which ended explosively before reaching orbit, though one of them managed to reach space for a brief period of time before being destroyed by its flight termination system.
Officials from the business stated at the beginning of 2024 that it could reach 144 launches for the year, or 12 launches per month. However, weather and the three different groundings of its Falcon 9 rocket due to various problems have caused some obstacles to that pace.
This launch is only the sixth of October thus far. It flew nine times in September, eleven times in August, six times in July, ten times in June, thirteen times in May, twelve times in April, eleven times in March, nine times in February, and ten times in January.
Most of them have been for Starlink, which has launched over 7,100 versions since the first functional versions were sent up in 2019.
This marked SpaceX’s 67th Starlink launch in 2024.