SpaceX: when it comes to the mission, Musk has it under control
At the beginning of this year, SpaceX announced that its goal was to launch 52 space missions, compared to the 31 it carried out during 2021.
On Friday, the company launched an Israeli Earth observation satellite, its 61st mission, the seventh this December and the last of the year. Never before has an aerospace company been able to scale up its activity to such an extent: both the number of launches per year and per month are absolute records in the history of the space race.
In the previous launch, the 60th of the year, the company put 54 satellites of the new version of Starlink into orbit, and then landed perfectly on a platform in the sea. The US Federal Communications Commission has already authorized the launch of 7,500 of these second-generation Starlink satellites.
Since the first launch of the Falcon 9 in 2010, excluding previous take-offs of its minimum viable project Falcon 1, SpaceX has carried out 197 launches, including four of its triple-core Falcon Heavy variant. Of those, 195 were total successes, plus one partial failure and one total loss.
In 2023, even more SpaceX launches are expected, including two flights carrying NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, along with least a couple of commercial manned flights, two cargo flights…
