On July 22 and 24, SpaceX completed two more successful Falcon 9 launches, both to benefit its own Starlink satellite internet project. 
As part of the Starlink Group 3-2 mission, a batch of 46 Starlink satellites went into orbit, followed by another batch of 53 vehicles (Starlink Group 4-25 mission) . With the previous launch on July 22, which was already the 32nd this year, Elon Musk’s space company broke last year’s absolute record for a full calendar year – SpaceX completed 2021 with 31 successful missions.
Congrats to SpaceX team on record number of launches!https://t.co/nb8ozrbqZ5
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2022
SpaceX orbital launches over the past five years:
- 2021-31
- 2020-26
- 2019-13
- 2018-21
- 2017-18
This year, SpaceX is showing some kind of insane pace – the company launches every 6.3 days. By the way, on July 22 SpaceX also landed its 125th launch vehicle and a total of 31 stages were used several times, and three of them were launched 13 times each. Provided that the current pace is maintained, SpaceX, remaining the undisputed leader in launching payload into orbit (according to the results of 31 missions, the company delivered 351 tons of payload into orbit this year – almost twice as much as the rest of the world together) , has every chance to carry out about 60 launches. Another interesting fact: SpaceX now responds with ten launches for every launch of its closest competitor, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) concern. JV Boeing and Lockheed Martin .
So far, there are no signs of a slowdown – the next Falcon 9 launch is scheduled for August 2: the launch vehicle will deliver the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (Danuri) lunar orbiter, developed by the South Korea Aerospace Research Institute, into space. The orbiter, its science payload, and ground control infrastructure are technology demonstrators. This is South Korea’s first lunar mission.
As for Starlink, there are already about 2600 Internet satellites in orbit – about 30% of the total number of active devices (based on the UN estimate – there are 9253 such). Today Starlink already operates in 36 countries .
In May 2018, Elon Musk talked about SpaceX’s plans to produce 30-40 Falcon 9 first stages for ~300 launches in the next 5 years and then switch to a Super Heavy + Starship pair . We look forward to Starship’s first orbital flight with great anticipation – there’s still a good chance of a launch in the coming months despite a recent test incident .
Elon Musk said that Starship will be ready before the first orbital flight already at the lime, and the next ship’s bet will be soon
