Sky's The Limit: Elon Musk's SpaceX Hits 222 Launches, Eyes More In Weeks Ahead

Elon Musk's SpaceX has completed 222 launches in total and has more missions lined up.

What Happened: With its Falcon 9 rocket launching the Intelsat IS-40e mission to a geosynchronous transfer orbit from Florida on Friday, SpaceX has touched 222 launches in total, as per its website.

The spacecraft manufacturer is now targeting to launch the Transporter-7 mission to low-Earth orbit from California on Thursday, April 13 at 11:47 p.m. PT. Transporter-7 is SpaceX's seventh dedicated smallsat rideshare mission and was previously expected to be launched on April 11.

The additional time allows for teams to complete pre-launch checkouts and for weather conditions to improve, SpaceX said in a tweet.

Meanwhile, Starship, touted to be "the biggest rocket ever“, is eyeing its first integrated flight test next week on April 17, pending regulatory approval. Though the company had previously said that the team is working towards a launch rehearsal this week, it wouldn’t be happening, SpaceX said on Twitter.

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SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket — collectively referred to as Starship — is a fully reusable transportation system aimed at carrying both crew and cargo to “Earth’s orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond.”

Why It Matters: SpaceX attempted its first launch in 2006 which failed. The first successful launch came in the second half of 2008 after two more failed attempts. Since then, the numbers have mostly gone up with a few slumps now and then, as per data from Statista.

Since 2020, however, the graph has only gone up. SpaceX completed 26 launches in 2020, 31 in 2021, and nearly doubled it to 61 last year. Since the onset of 2023, SpaceX had 25 launches starting with the Transporter-6 mission launch on Jan. 3.

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