SpaceX aiming for 60 launches in 2022, 4,200 active Starlink sats in 1.5 yrs: Elon Musk

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has acknowledged his company's progress so far and revealed that his team is now aiming for 60 Falcon 9 launches in 2022. In a tweet posted on Tuesday, Musk said that his Starlink satellite internet team is also ready and he is expecting as many as 4,200 Starlink satellites to start operation in the next 18 months. According to the billionaire, once the satellites are activated, they would account for approximately two-thirds of the total active satellites in the low-Earth orbit (LEO). 

"SpaceX Falcon team is making excellent progress – aiming for 60 launches this year! Starlink team too! Expecting over 4200 Starlink satellites in operation within 18 months, which is ~2/3 of all active satellites of Earth", Musk wrote in a series of tweets. With the latest announcement, Musk has raised the bar in terms of SpaceX's performance as the company was previously aiming for about 52 launches in 2022, making it an average of one launch every week. 

SpaceX's 2022 run so far

The company's latest successful mission was conducted on March 19, which was the 12th overall Falcon 9 launch in 2022. The majority of SpaceX's missions this year have been for the installation of Starlink satellites in LEO to boost the vast constellation consisting of over 2,000 satellites already. The launch on March 19 was carried out from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station with 53 Starlink satellites. According to Space.com, there are currently 2,282 Starlink satellites in the LEO, out of which 2,033 are currently operational. SpaceX reportedly has a license for launching 12,000 satellites and is planning to launch 30,000 more, something which has been highlighted as a matter of concern by astronomers and even NASA. 

Meanwhile, the number of Falcon 9 launches are only going to increase as the company has several new missions in the pipeline. Out of these, is the upcoming Axiom Space's Ax-1 mission on April 6 and the Crew-4 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on April 19.