Elon Musk sets ambitious goal for SpaceX in 2023: 'Aiming for up to 100 flights'

After recently breaking his own record of annual launches, Elon Musk is now aiming at a milestone never reached before. In his recent tweet, the tech mogul ambitiously revealed that his aerospace company would aim for 100 orbital launches next year, making it the world’s first company to do so. 

This revelation was made by Musk on Twitter after SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket on August 31 with 46 Starlink satellites in the company’s 39th mission this year. Responding to reports of SpaceX’s goal of 100 flights in 2023, Musk tweeted, “Yeah, aiming for up to 100 flights next year”. 

On July 22, SpaceX broke the record of most launches in a year (31 set in 2021) and is now conducting orbital roughly after every five days, according to Musk. At this rate, the company might successfully carry out 60 launches this year, an objective announced by Musk in March. He had even said that as many as 4,200 new Starlink satellites will be lofted into space in the next 18 months. 

Currently, there are over 2,800 active satellites that make up the Starlink constellation which is providing low-latency and high-speed internet in over 30 countries. Notably, most of SpaceX's Falcon 9 launches have been for Starlink, however, the company has also launched crucial missions such as Crew-4 on April 27 and South Korea's first Moon mission on August 5. 

As far as 2022 is concerned, SpaceX has some mammoth plans which include the first orbital mission of its gigantic rocket Starship and astronaut mission Crew-5 for NASA. Currently under development, the Starship is undergoing tests at the Starbase facility in Texas ahead of its trip around the Earth. Recently, Musk said that apart from releasing Tesla's Fully Self Driving (FSD) feature, putting Starship to orbit is his biggest goal this year. 

SpaceX also has some major work to do in the satellite internet business as it was recently adopted by Cruise company Royal Caribbean on its fleet. Royal Caribbean announced that it would start installing Starlink internet on all its Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Silversea Cruises ships and the work would be complete by next year.