Elon Musk‘s rocket manufacturing company, SpaceX, is eyeing 144 launches the next year, marking a 136% jump from the number of launches last year.
What Happened: SpaceX lead software engineer Catherine “Erin” Ishimoticha took to X on Thursday to announce that the company is looking for full-stack engineers to join them.
“We’re trying to launch 144 times in 2024, come help us keep the spice flowing!,” Ishimoticha wrote in the post.
SpaceX completed 26 launches in 2020, 31 in 2021, and nearly doubled it to 61 last year. Earlier, in March, when SpaceX completed its 20th launch for the year, Musk laid out big plans and said that the company is now eyeing over 70 launches for the remaining year, pegging the total number of launches for the year over 90.
The launch goals for the next year mark a 136% jump from the number of launches last year. If it was assumed that SpaceX would touch 100 launches this year, next year’s target would still be a 44% jump.
SpaceX touched the 90 launches benchmark earlier this month with the launch of 23 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit on December 7. It again launched more Starlink satellites on Dec. 8, taking the number of launches this year to 91.
Why It Matters: The 2024 launch target is not entirely unexpected. In September, on successfully launching its 62nd mission for the year, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took to X to say that the company is aiming for 10 Falcon flights a month by the end of the year and 12 launches every month next year.
The CEO then also said that SpaceX will deliver about 90% of Earth’s payload to orbit next year, higher than the 80% payload goal the company has set for 2023. With the successful flight of Starship, SpaceX will scale the payload target further to 99%, Musk said.
The Starship’s second liftoff on Nov. 18 saw successful stage separation, but the booster experienced an explosion shortly afterward.
The spacecraft lost contact with SpaceX after reaching an altitude of nearly 150 kilometers, failing to complete the test launch’s goal of a round-trip flight to space with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
Despite this setback, Flight 3 appears to be on the horizon.
"Starship Flight 3 hardware should be ready to fly in 3 to 4 weeks," Musk wrote on X a day after the second launch.
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