SpaceX launches first rocket in over a week

SpaceX launched a batch of its “Gen 2 mini” Starlink satellites from Florida last night, breaking a week long drought of launches from the company. While usually Starlink missions aren’t something to talk about, the long lull means the company will likely miss its 100 launch goal.

SpaceX breaks week long drought

At about 11:00 P.M. ET Monday night, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 carrying 23 Starlink satellites from SLC-40 in Florida. While there was nothing special about the payloads, we’ve seen plenty of these missions this year, this launch broke an 11 day launch drought from the company.

Before this, the last time SpaceX was able to launch a rocket was on December 8 with 22 Starlink satellites out in California.

Last week we expected a long list of SpaceX missions from all three of its launch pads across the United States. However, we ended up with none. Both weather and technical problems delayed launches out of Florida, while an unknown reason caused a Vandenberg flight to be delayed until after the Christmas weekend.

The Falcon Heavy rocket slated to launch the USSF-52 mission had to be rolled back to LC-39A‘s integration facility, hinting that the issue that caused the delay was with the rocket and not just ground equipment.

These sort of technical delays show a drastically different story than how the whole year went for SpaceX. Overall, the company was able to thread the needle with weather and showed almost no signs of having technical problems with its rockets.

However, no matter how much you attempt to make rocket launches routine, the technology and infrastructure to make them happen are extremely complex. Eventually something is going to go wrong, break, or wear down.

This week we could see two more Falcon 9 launches from SpaceX, one from each coast before we move into the final week of the year where we could see another three.

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100 Falcon launches likely off the table

If you’ve been following along with our launch tracker and are quick at math, you’ll realize that those numbers don’t add up to 100 Falcon launches. It should bring us up to 97 Falcon 9 and Heavy launches for 2023.

Elon Musk set SpaceX up for the goal towards the beginning of the year when he tweeted (it was still called that then) that the company was working towards 100 Falcon launches for the year. An extremely impressive stat that would be carried by the need to deploy as many Starlink satellites as possible to increase capacity.

If SpaceX didn’t get unlucky with a rare technical delay and poor launch weather, the company could have easily gotten to that triple digit milestone.

Next up for SpaceX will launch the SARah 2 & 3 satellites on a Falcon 9 from California on Friday. Then another Starlink launch is expected later that day on the East Coast.

After Christmas, SpaceX could launch as many as three more rockets using all three of its pads, LC-39A, SLC-40, and SLC-4E. First up would be the USSF-52 mission carrying the Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane, if the Falcon Heavy rocket is ready. That same day, December 28, SpaceX set the final Vandenberg launch of the year to take place that evening, yes it’s more Starlink satellites.

If all launch dates hold and no last minute surprise missions pop up, the final SpaceX launch for 2023 would be the Ovzon-3 mission from SLC-40 by the end of the week.

When including the two Starship test flights, that will bring SpaceX to a grand total of 99 launches for 2023, its best by far.

The company expects 144 launches in 2024, we’re not sure if that includes Starship but most likely not. SpaceX also hopes to increase West Coast launches to once a week, fly multiple Starship missions from Texas, and a handful of Falcon Heavy missions as well.