The first quarter of 2022 has been a busy one for Space Exploration Technologies Corp., and Chief Executive Elon Musk says the company is just getting started.
Musk announced via Twitter on March 28 that SpaceX is aiming to complete 60 launches this year, nearly double the number it launched last year and by far an all-time record for a private company.
SpaceX already has completed 11 missions this year, averaging nearly one a week and putting the company on pace to easily surpass the 31 missions it completed last year.
In January, members of a NASA oversight committee revealed that the company had at least 52 launches on its manifest this year.
It’s not clear whether the 60 missions proposed by Musk will include tests of the company’s new Starship launch vehicle, a massive spacecraft designed for interplanetary space travel and mass satellite deployments.
SpaceX has completed multiple high-altitude test flights of Starship at a launch facility it operates in Boca Chica, Texas. Musk said in March that Starship’s first orbital test flight could launch before the end of May.
Even without Starship launches, the company’s mission schedule is packed, with SpaceX set to complete a spate of launches in April that includes its fourth crew rotation mission to the International Space Station.
Trips to the space station are becoming a matter of routine for SpaceX, which was recently awarded six future supply missions to the in-space laboratory. NASA announced March 25 that 12 supply missions set to occur by 2026 would be split evenly by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman Corp.
The announcement comes just a month after NASA confirmed in February that SpaceX had been selected for three additional crewed missions to the space station, on top of the six that the company is already in the process of completing.
The crewed missions are worth a combined $3.5 billion. NASA said prices are not fixed for the future supply missions, but that the combined value of the 12 launches could be up to $14 billion.
Missions completed on behalf of NASA and other customers generate most of SpaceX’s revenue, but the bulk of the company’s launches so far this year have been in service of its own Starlink initiative.
Since 2019, SpaceX has deployed more than 2,000 satellites as part of the Starlink program – a global broadband network currently accessible to subscribers in parts of North America, Europe, Australia and South America.
Eventually, the company plans to deploy more than 10,000 of these satellites, which it says will be capable of providing high-speed, low-latency internet service to customers in places where service is currently slow or limited.
The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs has indexed just over 12,500 objects launched into space since the dawn of spaceflight (with many of those now destroyed or no longer in orbit). Already, Starlink satellites account for a considerable percentage of this total.
Musk on March 28 said the company could have up to 4,200 Starlink satellites in operation within the next 18 months.
Getting the company’s Starship spacecraft up-and-running could accelerate deployment of the broadband satellites even further, as the rocket is designed to carry larger loads than the Falcon 9 launch vehicles currently used in most SpaceX missions.
Right now, however, the ability of SpaceX to conduct future launches of Starship is heavily dependent on the results of an environmental review of the program currently being conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA said March 25 that it expected to complete the review by April 29.
Musk said at a February presentation that he was “highly confident” that the company would be able to begin launching Starship prototypes into space this year.
Eventually, he said, Starship could facilitate an even more ambitious launch schedule – with reusable rockets and rapid fueling systems allowing for multiple flights to launch each day.
