SpaceX’s launch on Friday evening of a rocket carrying a batch of satellites into low Earth orbit capped a record year for the closely held company led by Elon Musk.
The mission from California’s central coast was SpaceX’s 18th this year. That is more than any competitor and far exceeds the eight it launched last year before a September explosion grounded the company for the rest of the year while an investigation took place.
“SpaceX has had a phenomenal year, and they’ve motivated and inspired a lot of people as to what is possible,” said Eric Stallmer, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, an industry group for the private space sector.
Photo: AP
The coming year is expected to be even bigger.
With three launch pads at their disposal after repairing the one damaged in the blast in September last year, Musk and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell have said they expect to fly about 30 missions next year.
The tally is to include several missions for commercial satellite operators, military customers and NASA using the Falcon 9 rocket, which powered all of this year’s launches, but also a planned expansion to include a larger rocket and crewed missions.
Next year “will be the biggest year in the space industry since 1969,” Stallmer said, referring to NASA’s Apollo 11 mission to the moon.
The maiden flight of Falcon Heavy, SpaceX’s bigger and more powerful rocket that is to let it compete for heavier US military payloads, is slated for next month.
SpaceX is also expected next year to demonstrate the Crew Dragon spacecraft it plans to use to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station, first with an uncrewed mission as soon as April and then with a crewed test flight in August.
SpaceX and Boeing Co both have contracts with NASA to deliver US astronauts to the orbiting lab as part of the “Commercial Crew” program.
SpaceX’s total this year fell just shy of the 20 to 24 missions it had been targeting for the year.
Still, its rate exceeded that of any rivals competing for the same missions. Arianespace, based in France, has completed 11 launches this year. United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp, launched eight government missions on its Atlas and Delta rockets.
“SpaceX is now dominant in terms of launch volume,” said Marco Caceres, a senior space analyst with Teal Group Corp, an aerospace and defense market researcher. “They’ve established that they can launch more than any other program in the world, and they’ve established reusability. If they do 30 launches next year, it will be spectacular, but the big story for 2018 is Falcon Heavy and Commercial Crew.”
“They are No. 1 in terms of cost, and that’s why they are getting so much business,” Caceres said.
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