SpaceX has targeted up to 39 launches in 2020. Company liquidated on 26, which still makes it the most fruitful year for Elon Musk and his team, and the second after China and her family is the Long March rocket with the unofficial number of 30.
Most importantly, the SpaceX issue includes two missions that took astronauts to the International Space Station aboard the Crew, setting numerous milestones for human space flight. The Demo 2 missions which took NASA’s Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to space station was the first commercial manned flight and the first from U.S. soil since the completion of the 2011 space shuttle program. SpaceX repeated this with four astronauts, including one from Japan’s space agency, JAXA, on Crew-1 mission in November.
14 Starlink satellite launched made more than half of SpaceX’s flights this year, brought the broadband constellation closer to its first 1,000 flying routers in orbit, and enabled Better than nothing beta should start in October.
In addition to those 26 Falcon 9 flights, SpaceX has also continued to develop its next-generation Starship rocket at its South Texas facility. This culminated in the dramatic the first flight of the prototype at high altitude, which was considered a success despite a hard, explosive landing after reaching about 12.5 kilometers above sea level.
In 2021, we can expect even more from the same, with planned Falcon 9 missions carrying Starlinks, larger satellites and more astronauts into space. There are even a few Falcon Heavy launches on the calendar, which we failed to see in 2020. And we’ll certainly see more than the Starship development team in Texas.
In the meantime, sit back and enjoy every launch that Elon and his friends brought us during that year that we would otherwise rather forget.