SpaceX just broke its annual Falcon 9 launch record — and it’s only July - The Verge

On July 22nd, SpaceX broke its own record for orbital launches in a single year by launching its 32nd Falcon 9 mission of 2022.

This afternoon, SpaceX successfully launched its 32nd Falcon 9 mission of 2022, officially breaking the company’s own record for orbital launches conducted in a single year. And since it’s only July, there’s still plenty of year left to push that record even higher.

SpaceX has been steadily increasing its launch cadence each year — aside from a dip in 2019. For 2021, the company pulled off 31 launches, the most it had ever done, which also made SpaceX the most prolific American launch provider by far.

At the beginning 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 should still strive to maintain safety amid the increased pace. “NASA and SpaceX will have to be watchful during 2022 that they’re not victims of their success,” Sandy Magnus, a former NASA astronaut and member of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, said during the January meeting.

But so far, SpaceX has been sticking to its schedule, with nothing but seamless missions this year. Ironically, SpaceX had originally hoped to launch today’s missions on Thursday but stopped the countdown short after an abort was triggered less than a minute before takeoff. It was a rare abort for SpaceX, which hasn’t had to cut a countdown short in many months due to a technical issue. The company was able to get off the ground today, however, after an uninterrupted countdown.

One key factor that allows for such a busy launch schedule is that, in a majority of SpaceX’s launches this year, SpaceX is serving as its own customer. The company is using these launches to flesh out its massive internet-from-space Starlink constellation, lofting batches of up to 53 satellites at a time (though the numbers vary from launch to launch). Today’s flight out of Vandenberg Space Force Base in California put up an additional 46 Starlink satellites. The company currently has roughly 2,600 Starlink satellites in orbit.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/22/23273077/spacex-falcon-9-launch-record-2022-32-high-cadence

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