SpaceX succeeded again – at noon on December 28, the American private space company carried out the 60th launch of this year, which may become the final one (the EROS-C3 mission is scheduled for December 30, but the Israeli optical satellite can be launched as early as 2023). Be that as it may, this is a new all-time record for SpaceX in one calendar year and doubles the result of 2021, which the company completed with 31 missions.
They did it!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 28, 2022
60 launches in one calendar year is a new SpaceX record
In previous materials, we have repeatedly pointed out that this year SpaceX is showing some crazy pace and launching rockets on average every 6 days. These are definitely great results not only for one company, but for the entire industry as a whole.
SpaceX orbital launches for the period from 2017 to 2022:
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- 2022 – 60
- 2021 – 31
- 2020 – 26
- 2019 – 13
- 2018 – 21
- 2017 – 18
In 2022, SpaceX accounted for a large part of all space launches in the United States. She is just a few launches short of surpassing China in the number of launches, but is the undisputed leader in payloads launched into orbit. The last official statistics were published in July, and then, based on the results of 31 launches, the company delivered 351 tons of payload into orbit — almost twice as much as the rest of the world combined.
At the same time, due to its multiple use (the first stage and the main fairing are reused), the Falcon-9 does not leave any chances for rivals, and still reliably holds the number one launch among all LVs.
It can also be mentioned that before that SpaceX made three launches in just 36 hours and now broke the record for multiple use of Falcon 9 – the stage with the index 1058 took off into space on the 15th, after which it successfully returned to the sea platform.
Starlink Group 5-1 – the first v2.0 satellites or not?
Today’s launch is interesting not only in terms of numbers (by the way, it is also the 193rd launch of Falcon 9 and the 202nd launch of SpaceX in total) — as part of the Starlink Group 5-1 mission, the first batch of 54 Internet satellites of the updated Starlink network went into orbit. What exactly these satellites are, is still a mystery.
SpaceX in the mission description on its website notes that it is the first launch of the updated Starlink network, but does not explicitly use the name Starlink v2.0. As we already know, the second generation of Starlink is much larger and heavier (1250 kg) than the current Starlink v1.5 with laser interconnections (about 295 kg). And in the case of the Starlink Group 5-1 mission, there are several differences. The fact is that so far the company has launched a maximum of 54 v1.5 satellites on Falcon 9, so it is not yet clear how SpaceX managed to send 54 Starlink v2.0 satellites, which are much larger and heavier, now. It will be recalled that initially SpaceX planned to deliver Starlink v2.0 into orbit using Starship, but its development has not yet been completed. It is quite possible that this is a kind of variant of the v2 mini Falcon 9 with the same mass as the v1.5. At the same time, there is also a high probability that these satellites are not full v2 versions at all, although many sites have hurriedly reported the launch of the first Starlink v2.0.
Be that as it may, SpaceX previously received a new FCC license that allows the company to deploy satellites in new orbits, which will ensure further increases in network bandwidth, as well as its expansion to 5G smartphones and Tesla electric cars. By the way, SpaceX has permission to launch 42,000 satellites (this does not mean at all that it plans to launch that many). There are currently about 3,374 Starlink Internet satellites in orbit (a total of 3,666 have been launched for the entire time), of which 3,035 are already in operation — about 30% of the total number of operational devices (if we go by the UN estimate — 10,100 of them). SpaceX recently reported that the number of active Starlink subscribers reached 1 million — this happened 3 months after the release of the millionth Starlink terminal.
