Alex Bruno
SpaceX successfully launched its 32nd Falcon 9 mission this afternoon, shattering the previous record for orbital launches in a calendar year for the firm. The year still has a chance to break that record high given it is just July. With the exception of 2019, SpaceX has been gradually increasing its launch cadence each year. With 31 missions in 2021, a record for the firm, SpaceX became the most active US launch provider to date. present Time.
SpaceX set an exceedingly ambitious target to fly 52 flights in 2022 at the start of the year. By a NASA advisory council in January, the figure was made public, with a warning that SpaceX must endeavor to preserve safety as the rate of development continues to increase Until the January conference, Sandy Magnus, a former NASA astronaut and a member of NASA’s Space Safety Advisory Committee, warned, “NASA and SpaceX must be careful during 2022 so that they are not victims of their success.”
There are still several months in the year
However, SpaceX has so far adhered to its timeline, conducting only flawless launches this year. Ironically, SpaceX had planned to launch Thursday’s missions, but the abortion started less than a minute before liftoff, so the countdown was halted. SpaceX has never before had to stop the countdown due to a technical difficulty, thus it was an unusual miscarriage. But today, following a continual countdown, the business was able to launch.
The fact that SpaceX is the client in the bulk of its missions this year contributes significantly to the company’s hectic launch schedule. The business employs these launches to deploy constellations of up to 53 satellites at once, bringing the huge Starlink constellation online from orbit (although numbers vary from launch to launch). 46 more Starlink satellites were launched today from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base. Nearly 2,600 Starlink satellites are now in orbit thanks to the corporation.
SpaceX has plenty of other activities to keep the firm busy even without launching Starlink. SpaceX routinely launches Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station with the help of its collaboration with NASA. The business also does carrier missions, which include the deployment of a large number of small satellites during a single flight. A busy manifesto is produced by all of that in addition to SpaceX’s commercial clients and Department of Defense missions.
As the business works to optimize rocket landing and reuse, almost all of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets launched this year were already launched vehicles.
Additionally, SpaceX is only focusing on the Falcon 9 Block 5 model, which has been designed for reusability. After liftoff, today’s rocket safely landed on one of SpaceX’s unmanned ships, bringing the company’s overall number of Falcon 9 rocket landings to 125. Even after breaking its own record, SpaceX is still making great progress. Another operation to launch yet another batch of Starlink satellites is planned for Sunday, July 24 from Florida.
Source: TheValleyPost
