A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 21 Starlink satellites lifted off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-A at 12:39 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024, in Florida. (Courtesy SpaceX via TNS)
ORLANDO, Fla. (Tribune News Service) — SpaceX put the final countdown in the books for the Space Coast early Tuesday, adding one more to the record pace of launches for the year.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 21 Starlink satellites lifted off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-A at 12:39 a.m.
The first-stage booster flew for the 16th time, having previously flown the Crew-6 mission among its 15 other flights. It made a recovery landing on the droneship Just Read the Instructions in the Atlantic.
It marked the 93rd orbital launch from either KSC or neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, with all but five coming from SpaceX.
The pace of launches blew by 2023’s total of 72 back in October but fell short of the forecast of as many as 111 predicted in January.
For SpaceX, it flew 26 missions from KSC including two Falcon Heavy launches in 2024. It launched another 62 from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40.
United Launch Alliance flew the other five missions, sending up two of its new Vulcan rockets and two Atlas V rockets from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 41 while the final Delta IV Heavy launch took off from Space Launch Complex 37.
SpaceX also flew 46 from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base, setting a company record of 134 orbital missions for the year. It flew its in-development Starship and Super Heavy on four suborbital test flights from its Texas launch site Starbase.
Among the Space Coast launches were five human spaceflights carrying 16 people to space. Those include the Starliner flight from ULA to the International Space Station and four launches of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.
SpaceX’s launches of the Crew-8 and Crew-9 missions as well as its flight for Axiom Space on the Ax-3 mission also went to the ISS. The Polaris Dawn mission took billionaire and the next nominee to head NASA, Jared Isaacman, and three others on an orbital mission that featured the first commercial space walk.
One rocket that didn’t launch in 2024 is Blue Origin’s New Glenn, which had been trying to get its debut mission off the ground before the end of the year.
The Federal Aviation Administration only gave Jeff Bezos’ company a launch license for the heavy-lift rocket on Friday, which was also when Blue Origin was able to finally perform a test hot fire of the rocket on the pad at Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 36.
The FAA has cleared the NG-1 Blue Ring Pathfinder mission for a Jan. 5-6 launch attempt during a window from 11:30 p.m. until 2:45 a.m. and a backup of Jan. 6-7 during the same window, but Blue Origin has yet to announce its target launch date.
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