by Surprise, surprise: SpaceX plans to set more spaceflight records this year.
Elon Musk’s company launched 96 orbital missions in 2023, a big jump from its previous high of 61, set a year earlier. And SpaceX is planning another big leap in 2024, one that will take it well over the century mark.
“Looking ahead to next year, we want to increase [our] flight speed at approximately 12 flights per month, or 144 flights,” Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX vice president of flight construction and reliability, said Oct. 18 during a U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Space and Science hearing.
That equates to one release every 2.8 days, a cadence that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. But SpaceX has a history of rethinking our ideas about what’s possible in spaceflight, so that ambitious goal seems eminently achievable.
Related: 8 ways SpaceX has transformed spaceflight
Starlink will lead the way
About two-thirds of SpaceX’s launches in 2023 were dedicated to building Starlink, the company’s satellite internet mega-constellation. That trend is likely to continue in 2024, as the network is not yet complete.
Starlink currently consists of about 5,230 operational spacecraft, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell. But SpaceX has permission to deploy a total of 12,000 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO), and the company has requested approval for another 30,000 on top of that.
Starlink batches should therefore continue to fly from both coasts (Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Florida’s Kennedy Space Center) through 2024.
We’ll also see more SpaceX astronaut launches this year.
The company launched three crewed missions to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2023: two for NASA and one for Axiom Space, a Houston-based company that aims to operationalize its own outpost in LEO within a few years.
SpaceX will send five astronaut missions to the sky this year, if all goes according to plan. NASA’s Crew-8 and Crew-9 flights are scheduled to take off in February and August, respectively. Axiom’s Ax-3 mission will launch on January 17, and Ax-4 will not launch before October. And in April, SpaceX plans to launch Polaris Dawn, a free-flight mission to LEO that will include the first spacewalk by a private astronaut.
Related: SpaceX’s Ax-2 mission for Axiom Space in photos (gallery)
Starship preparing to leave
Ninety-one of SpaceX’s 96 orbital missions last year were carried out by its Falcon 9 rocket, with the company’s powerful Falcon Heavy accounting for the other five.
But 2023 also included two test flights of the launcher that SpaceX believes will fuel a revolution in space flight and exploration: Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built.
Both the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy feature reusable first stages, a major advance in spaceflight technology. But Starship, which measures about 400 feet (122 meters) tall when fully stacked, is designed to be completely reusable. In fact, Musk wants Starship’s massive Super Heavy booster to land directly on its launch pad after liftoff, to allow for rapid inspection, refitting, and re-flight.
The two Starship test flights took off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in south Texas in April and November of last year, respectively. Both missions aimed to send the upper stage of the vehicle around the Earth, with the goal of landing in an area of the Pacific near Hawaii.
The April flight didn’t last long. Starship suffered several serious problems, including the failure of its two stages to separate, and SpaceX intentionally destroyed the falling vehicle just four minutes after liftoff.
Starship moved forward on its second flight; Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines ignited as planned and the booster successfully separated from the upper stage. But this mission also ended prematurely, with the destruction of the upper stage about eight minutes into the flight.
We shouldn’t have to wait long for flight number three. Last week, SpaceX tested the engines of its latest Starship prototype, which it plans to launch as soon as it obtains a license from the US Federal Aviation Administration. (The FAA is currently overseeing an investigation into what happened on the flight November Starship).
SpaceX is also working to prepare other Starship vehicles, in line with the company’s development philosophy, which prioritizes frequent test flights and rapid iteration.
“I think maybe by the end of the year they’ll have it down functionally. Not in terms of cadence, but just demonstrating reusability,” said Justus Parmar, CEO of venture capital and advisory firm Fortuna Investments, which focuses primarily on the space industry, he said of SpaceX’s efforts on Starship. “So, that’s going to be huge.”
Time is of the essence for Starship development. NASA chose the giant vehicle as the first crewed lander for its Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent, sustainable human presence on and around the Moon by the late 2020s. The plan calls for Starship to transport astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time in the Artemis 3 mission, currently scheduled for liftoff in late 2025 or 2026.
Related: NASA Artemis Program: Everything you need to know
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Private space flights increase
The last two years have been difficult for investors in most fields, and space was no exception.
“Growth has been crushed,” Parmar told Space.com. “Everything is down between 70 and 90%.”
But he sees a change of course coming. Money will start flowing into the space ecosystem again in a big way this year, potentially leading to a “banner year” in 2025, Parmar predicts.
“The technology is more advanced than ever, and yet we have valuations that are in some ways the lowest they’ve ever been in a given capacity. So I think the setup with new capital is really promising,” he said.
Low prices and rapidly advancing technology are not the only factors that are about to change the situation. The continued success of SpaceX, which dominates the private spaceflight industry, is showing investors that there is money to be made on the final frontier. And that is fundamental, according to Parmar.
“In any burgeoning or emerging industry, you always need a pioneer – you need a success story,” he said. “If there are no winners in the industry, no one will ever support [it]”.
Google was one of the pioneers in the early 2000s, when investors needed a success story after the Internet bubble burst, Parmar said. Google ended up reshaping the entire internet economy and SpaceX may do something similar on the final frontier.
This isn’t to say SpaceX is the only spaceflight company that has a big 2024. Parmar believes Blue Origin, which Amazon’s Jeff Bezos founded in 2000, is poised for a breakthrough year.
Blue Origin just got a new CEO: Dave Limp, who had been Amazon’s senior vice president of devices and services. Additionally, Bezos recently announced that he will be moving from Seattle to Miami. He broke the news in an Instragram post, which also noted that “Blue Origin operations are increasingly moving to Cape Canaveral.” The Space Coast is just a few hundred miles from Bezos’ new home in South Florida.
These signs point to Bezos prioritizing Blue Origin more than in the past and participating more actively in the company’s activities, Parmar said. (Like SpaceX, Blue Origin has bold ambitions; Bezos has said he wants to help humanity extend its footprint in the solar system.)
“I think everything they’ve been doing is going to accelerate,” Parmar said. “He’s putting his all into this.”
