First of all, the same rule applies as did to the other thread, no Elon Musk discussions please.
Other than today’s launch (first of the year) and if one happens to be the last launch of the year, I will not list individual Starlink launches, but will summarize them monthly.
SpaceX is targeting 144 launches this year.
If they had said that last year, I would have said they were full of ■■■■■ but considering they damn near pulled off their estimate of 100 launches last year, I believe them. That would be 12 launches a month or about 3 launches a week.
The first launch of the year occurred 03:44 UTC on January 3rd, from Vandenburg Space Force Base Launch Pad 4E. The cargo was Starlink 7-9. This batch of satellites is notable for including the first six Starlink satellites with direct to cell capability. The mission was successful with a successful drone ship landing.
Again this, will be the last Starlink launch I will list, unless the year ends with a Starlink launch.
Later today the Ovzon-3 mission will go from CCSFS.
9 total missions, all successful, all boosters landing successfully.
5 of those were Starlink, 3 from VSFB, 2 from CCSFS and 0 from KSC.
On February 8th, PACE launched from CCSFS to sun synchronous orbit.
On February 14th, USSF-124 (2 HBTSS and 4 SDA Tranche 0 Tracking Layer satellites) launched from CCSFS to low Earth orbit.
On February 15th IM-1 Nova-C Odysseus lander launched from KSC to trans lunar injection.
On February 20th, Merah Putih 2 / Telkomsat HTS 113BT launched from CCSFS to geostationary transfer orbit.
On a side note, the Crew-8 mission scheduled to launch later tonight was scrubbed due to forecast ascent winds out of range.
Which brings up another possible three launch day tomorrow, one from KSC, one from CCSFS and one from VSFB, the other two missions being a Transporter and a Starlink.
Hasn’t happened yet, but it is simply inevitable, sooner or later.
All in all, the latest Starship launch actually went pretty damn well for SpaceX, even if they failed to recover either the booster or the Starship.
Starship is an incredible leap forward in spacecraft technology, not baby steps. In every failure, many lessons are learned. It took quite a number of destroyed boosters before SpaceX got booster landings down to an art.
As the above video depicts the military and NASA (and their German counterparts) experienced far more failures than successes in the early days of the space program. And that is basically the situation SpaceX is now in with Starship, as a technological leap.
But SpaceX got through the boost phase and hot staging successfully, an important milestone and was able to get a good period of on orbit data.
All in all, I believe it was a good day for SpaceX.
And now for perhaps some of the most amazing reentry plasma views anybody has ever seen.
That would be 12 launches a month or about 3 launches a week.
