SpaceX has had its busiest year yet for rocket launches.
The spaceflight company led by Elon Musk has so far conducted 129 Falcon 9 launches, two Falcon Heavy launches, and three Starship launches. Three more Falcon 9 missions are planned before the end of the year, making a grand total of 137 launches for 2024 — way more than the 98 launches achieved in 2023.
Most of the rockets launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, while some missions started from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. All three of the Starship flights launched from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
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The Falcon rocket flights mostly involved deployments of satellites for Starlink, SpaceX’s internet-from-space service. But there were also more than 20 launches for a range of commercial customers, up from 12 in 2023. Launches involving government contracts, meanwhile, ticked up to around 18 for the year.
It also conducted several rideshare missions, which keep costs down by serving multiple customers at once. One of these missions involved more than 100 payloads.
It wasn’t just satellites that SpaceX is deploying, as it also sent Crew-8 and Crew-9 to the space station, along with crew attached to the privately funded Axiom-3 mission. Additionally, SpaceX used a Falcon 9 to launch the privately funded Polaris Dawn mission, which sent a crew to the furthest point from Earth since the Apollo missions five decades, and also involved the first commercial spacewalk.
As usual, SpaceX brought most of its first-stage Falcon 9 boosters home shortly after they’d deployed their payloads — or astronauts — to orbit. Only one Falcon 9 booster landing ended in failure this year. It happened in August when the vehicle caught fire during the touchdown, before toppling over.
SpaceX has actually fallen slightly short of its original launch forecast for 2024 due to delays caused by a number of weather and technical issues.
Looking ahead, 2025 is set to be even busier, with SpaceX aiming to serve more customers than ever. It’s also aiming to ramp up testing of its mighty Starship rocket with as many as 25 launches taking place over the next 12 months. To date, the rocket has only flown six times, with the first one launching in April 2023. SpaceX already has permission for the Starship’s seventh test flight, which some reports suggest could take place in early January.
Creating a record 17 million pounds of thrust as it leaves the ground, a Starship launch would mark a spectacular beginning to SpaceX’s 2025 campaign.