A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying the Psyche spacecraft lifts off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on October 13, 2023.
Chandan Khanna | AFP | Getty Images
Elon Musk's SpaceX broke its previous annual record for orbital rocket launches, completing 96 successful missions in 2023 at a blistering average launch speed of every four days.
SpaceX achieved 91 launches this year with its Falcon 9 rocket and another five with the Falcon Heavy, surpassing its previous annual record of 61 orbital launches in 2022. For comparison, SpaceX launched Falcon 9 more times this year than in the entire first decade then Rocket's debut.
This year, SpaceX landed its 250th orbital rocket and launched and landed a single rocket 19 times, further pushing the boundaries of rocket reuse. This week, SpaceX also set a new company record for the shortest time between orbital launches, at just under three hours. This represents the shortest time between Florida launches since NASA's Gemini 11 mission in 1966.
Additionally, SpaceX's launch count for this year does not include the two Starship test flights that did not carry commercial payloads to orbit.
Jon Edwards, SpaceX vice president of Falcon launch vehicles, wrote in a social media post that just a few years ago Musk proposed “a goal of 100 launches as a thought experiment.”
“Here we are. “I am so incredibly proud to be working with the best team in the world and so excited to see what we achieve next year,” Edwards wrote.
SpaceX officials said the company aims to launch up to 144 Falcon missions in 2024 as it continues to deploy satellites for the Starlink system, which accounts for much of its $180 billion valuation.
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