SpaceX makes record 6th launch in a month
SpaceX continued its busy April with a record sixth Falcon 9 launch, this time from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Friday.
The company sent up another 53 of its Starlink internet satellites from Space Launch Complex 40 at 5:27 p.m. amid a gorgeous, mostly blue Florida evening sky.
The first-stage booster flew for the sixth time, having recently been used on the private AX-1 mission for Axiom Space, and also on last fall’s private Inspiration4 flight. SpaceX was able to land it once again on the droneship Just Read the Instructions in the Atlantic Ocean. It took SpaceX only nine days to refurbish the booster, and it’s been only 21 days since it was last launched, the fastest turnaround ever for the company.
It’s the second Starlink launch from Canaveral in eight days. SpaceX has already sent up more than 2,300 of the 570-pound satellites on 43 previous Starlink missions flown since 2019 and 10th this year. The company has approval to place 4,408 Starlinks into service, each of which orbit at around 341 miles altitude.
SpaceX is seeking Federal Communications Commission approval to increase its Starlink presence to about 30,000 with future launches on board its in-the-works Starship rocket.
The Starlink program at full capacity looks to provide the company billions of dollars from millions of Internet subscribers across the planet and help pay for SpaceX’s missions to Mars.
The launch is the 17th for SpaceX in 2022 and sixth this month, breaking the previous record of five in December 2021.
Two of the launches were Crew Dragon missions flying from Kennedy Space Center, first with the AX-1 launch on April 8 followed by this past Wednesday’s launch of Crew-4. SpaceX also had one other Canaveral launch, Transporter-4, as well as one launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base for the National Reconnaissance Office.
The company also handled the return of the AX-1 mission with the landing of Crew Dragon Endeavour off the coast of Florida on Monday. It has the return of Crew-3 on Crew Dragon Endurance coming up next week.
SpaceX could see as many as 60 launches this year, according to CEO Elon Musk. Last week he praised the work rate of Falcon 9 posting to Twitter, “SpaceX Falcon team making great progress! Aiming for 5 day launch cadence with many performance & refurb improvements.”
This year’s pace far exceeds 2021’s record 31 launches in one year.
To date, the company has had 155 successful launches and managed recovery of 117 of its boosters.