SpaceX completed its 400th successful Falcon launch with its Falcon 9 rocket launching a Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station with supplies on Monday, the company said.
What Happened: Falcon 9 launched Dragon to the International Space Station from Florida on Monday carrying over 6,000 pounds of science, supplies, and hardware. The mission marked the Falcon launch vehicle’s 400th successful launch to date, SpaceX said in a post on social media platform X.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also congratulated the team at SpaceX on the achievement.
“Strange that no one has copied SpaceX after all this time,” Musk said in another post about the company’s efforts towards reusing the Falcon vehicle’s boosters in a bid to bring down the cost of spaceflight.
Falcon is SpaceX’s primary launch vehicle. SpaceX completed its 100th Falcon flight of the year late last month.
The company is currently also undertaking testing and development of its ambitious Starship launch vehicle. The company has conducted five test flights to date, starting from April 2023. However, the vehicle is yet to carry any payload to space.
Why It Matters: SpaceX was looking to launch 144 times in 2024, averaging twelve times per month earlier this year.
SpaceX VP of Launch Kiko Dontchev said on Tuesday that the company will not make its goal of 144 launches this year but is still targeting 30 more launches for the remaining year.
“While we will not make our original goal of 144 launches, we are still targeting 30 more launches in 2024 (~one every two days). It will not be easy and our work is cut out for us, but the team is all in,” Dontchev wrote on X.
For the entirety of 2023, SpaceX only completed 96 launches, not including two test flights of the company’s Starship launch vehicle.
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Photo courtesy: SpaceX
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