The first two Starlink satellites, which admittedly were prototypes and ended up looking nothing like the operational units, were launched on a rideshare mission with the Paz satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, in February 2018. With the seventh flight of Starlink Wednesday, 422 Starlink satellites will have been launched across eight missions – seven dedicated Starlink flights and one ride-share. If SpaceX can maintain a launch cadence of two Falcon 9s each month in May through December, they could end 2020 with the 100th Falcon 9 mission. Given its flight rate, Falcon 9 itself will likely reach 100 launches to its credit at some point within its 10th year of operation (4 June 2020 – 3 June 2021). With the seventh flight of Starlink on Wednesday, SpaceX made its 92nd orbital launch attempt.Īt this rate, the company will likely achieve its 100th orbital launch attempt in the summer or autumn months this year. Meanwhile, Starship has simultaneously been put through multiple design iterations, builds, and tests.įurthermore, it all happened while SpaceX worked with NASA to design, develop, build, and return domestic human launch capability to the United States - a goal they stand ready to achieve No Earlier Than 27 May. and global competitors scrambling to design lower-cost and/or reusable rocket systems.Īnd all this while Falcon Heavy was developed, test flown, and entered operation. Meanwhile, the company implemented reusability with the Falcon 9 to a scale that sent U.S. Moreover, the impressive rise of Falcon 9 occurred while SpaceX actively redesigned - in some cases, radically - the rocket through numerous changes, culminating more or less in the Block 5 design flying today. In that same time period, SpaceX has at least five missions planned (the 8th, 9th, and 10th flights of Starlink in May, June, and July the Demo-2 crew flight to the International Space Station in May and the GPS-III mission in June). In the second five years of operation, Falcon 9 amassed an impressive 65 flights (counting the seventh flight of Starlink on Wednesday) - an average of 13 missions a year.Īt this point, given Falcon 9’s launch rate, it is highly unlikely Atlas V will recapture its top spot.Ītlas V has one mission in May and a following mission in July. The changing of the guard - so to speak - is made all the more impressive by the fact that in its first three years, Falcon 9 only flew five times.īy June 2015, the rocket had 19 flights to its name - 14 flights in two years compared to 5 flights in the first three years. rocket.Ītlas V began flying on 21 August 2002 and has 83 flights to its name after 18 years - for an annual rate of 4.6 launches.įalcon 9 began flying on 4 June 2010 and will reach 84 flights in just under 10 years with a flight rate of 8.4 launches per year.įalcon 9 in the transsonic regime during the sixth Starlink launch on 18 March 2020. launch operations, as Falcon 9 reached 84 flights to its name and officially took the mantle from Atlas V as the most flown, currently operational U.S. The seventh flight of Starlink satellites launched Wednesday, 22 April at 15:30 EDT (19:30 UTC) from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center. Meanwhile, SpaceX is actively making moves on the ground, securing FCC permits for Starlink ground terminals/stations across the United States. As SpaceX continued its steady march of Starlink internet satellite launches, the company reached a new milestone with the seventh flight of Starlink on Wednesday: Falcon 9 took the mantle of “most flown currently operational U.S.
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