Elon Musk's SpaceX makes world record with one Falcon 9 launch every six days in 2022

Elon Musk’s aerospace firm SpaceX has a big reason to celebrate as it conducted a record-setting 61 launches in 2022. SpaceX would conduct a launch of its Falcon 9 rocket every six days on an average and clocked in almost double the number of missions in 2021 (32 launches). This number is one more than than the target set by CEO Elon Musk, who said in March that SpaceX is targeting 60 launches this year. Earlier on December 28, Musk congratulated the team of SpaceX who achieved the target in time. 

With this feat, the company has made the world record for most launches of a single vehicle type (falcon 9) in a single year. "On average, SpaceX launched every six days from one of our three sites with 92% of missions completed with flight-proven first stage rocket boosters," the company said in a tweet. "Most importantly, SpaceX successfully delivered our customers’ payloads to orbit, deployed additional Starlink satellites that add more capacity to our network, and flew critical cargo and astronauts to the space station and safely returned them back home Earth," a second tweet read. 

The company's last mission of 2022 was dedicated to the launch of Israeli Earth-imaging satellite EROS C-3 which lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 1:08 pm IST on December 30. 

SpaceX's first launch of 2023

SpaceX will attempt its first launch of 2023 for the Transporter-6 mission from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The Falcon 9 rocket is targeted for lift-off at 8:26 pm IST with 114 payloads including CubeSats, microsats, picosats, and orbital transfer vehicles carrying spacecraft to be deployed at a later time. The first stage booster being used for Transporter-6 has previously launched GPS III-3, Turksat 5A, Transporter-2, Intelsat G-33/G-34 and 10 Starlink missions, according to SpaceX.

Apart from satellite missions, SpaceX would also launch multiple crew and cargo missions for NASA to the International Space Station (ISS), along with its Starship for the dearMoon project consisting of nine crew members, including Indian actor Dev Joshi.