ORLANDO, Fla. — A SpaceX launch from Cape Canaveral on Saturday evening marked the 73rd launch from the Space Coast in 2024, the most ever in one year.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 22 of the company’s Starlink satellites lifted off from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 5:47 p.m.
The first-stage booster made its 19th launch with a recovery landing downrange in the Atlantic Ocean on the droneship Just Read the Instructions.
A SpaceX Starlink launch on Wednesday tied the 2023 record, which saw a combination of 68 from SpaceX, three from United Launch Alliance and one from Relativity Space, from pads at either Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
“Meeting and exceeding previous benchmarks is all part of how we are setting the pace for space in this new era,” SLD 45 posted on social media after tying the record.
In 2024, SpaceX has now matched its 2023 totals with 68 of the 73 launches, with United Launch Alliance responsible for the other five.
United Launch Alliance’s missions this year have been the debut and followup launches of its new Vulcan Centaur rockets along with two of its remaining Atlas Vs and a Delta IV Heavy.
It has also been a banner year for human spaceflight, with five Space Coast launches: four from SpaceX and the first ever for United Launch Alliance.
Both United Launch Alliance and SpaceX had one launch each from their Cape Canaveral pads, which marks the first time since Apollo 7 launched from what was then Cape Kennedy Launch Complex 34 in 1968 that the Space Force pads have carried humans to orbit. The rest of the Apollo launches as well as Skylab, space shuttle and SpaceX Crew Dragon launches had been from the two pads at Kennedy Space Center.
This year’s Canaveral debuts were the Boeing CST-100 Starliner on the Crew Flight Test mission from United Launch Alliance’s Launch Complex 41 and the SpaceX Crew-9 mission from SLC-40.
The other three — SpaceX Crew-8, Axiom Space’s Ax-3 and the Polaris Dawn missions — were all from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-A.
This year’s five launches sending up 16 people have been the most human spaceflights from the Space Coast since the final year of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011, which had the last three launches of shuttles Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis also carrying a total of 16.
SpaceX had two other human spaceflights originally on the calendar for 2024 at one point, but the private Axiom Space Ax-4 and Fram2 missions have been pushed to spring 2025. NASA also originally was targeting 2024 for its Artemis II mission, but that was pushed to 2025 as well.
The rest of 2024, though, could see the debut launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, currently targeting November. It also could see two more United Launch Alliance launches of its Vulcan Centaur, awaiting the Space Force to certify it so it can knock out the first two of a backlog of national security missions.
SpaceX, meanwhile, has another cargo resupply mission to the space station coming up as soon as Nov. 4 and several more Falcon 9 launches for Starlink, the Department of Defense and private satellite customers on tap.
The total number of Space Coast launches could approach 100 with a little more than nine weeks to go in the year.
