With little fanfare this weekend, SpaceX launched two Falcon 9 rockets.
The first booster lifted off on Friday night and carried nearly three
tons of supplies to the International Space Station, including two new
space suits, for NASA. The second mission launched on Sunday boosted
another batch of 53 Starlink satellites, bringing the on-orbit total to
more than 2,500 operational Internet spacecraft.
The launches attracted relatively little notice in the space community
and beyond because Falcon 9 launches have become so commonplace. Already
this year, SpaceX has launched 31 rockets, all successfully. This tally
matches the number of Falcon 9 boosters orbited in 2021, which at the
time set a record for the launch company.
But this year, SpaceX has taken its cadence to another level, with a mix
of payloads including its Starlink satellites, crew and cargo missions
for NASA, Department of Defense missions, and commercial satellites. As
of Monday, the Falcon 9 rocket has launched every 6.4 days this year and
has lofted nearly 300,000 kg into low Earth orbit. This is considerably
more than every other country and company in the world combined. Two
more Starlink launches are likely this week.
SpaceX has also continued to push the boundaries of reuse. In the last
month, the company flew three different first stages on its 13th
flights. SpaceX officials say they have gathered enough data about
reusing these first-stage cores that, for now, there seem to be no
showstoppers to preclude flying many more missions each.
To put this cadence into perspective, consider the flight rate of
SpaceX's main US-based competitor, United Launch Alliance. Counting both
its Delta and Atlas fleets, ULA launched its last 31 rockets from March
19, 2017, to the present day. That's a cadence of one launch every 64 days.
Put another way, SpaceX is now launching at a rate of 10 rockets to
every one of its main American competitor. Both companies have 100
percent success rates during this time period.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07/spacex-just-matched-its-record-for-annual-launches-and-its-only-july/
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