SpaceX continues record-breaking year with Starship’s full success and Falcon milestones

SpaceX continues to break records with its Falcon rockets during 2024 completing to date a total of 67 missions so far and putting the company on track to complete 135 launches by the end of it. SpaceX also unveiled a new extravehicular activity suit, completed several missions for the US and foreign governments, as well as started operational deployment of Starlink Direct to Cell and Starshield satellites. 

SpaceX’s Starship rocket also performed its fourth flight, successfully completing a full mission from launch to soft landing of both stages on the water. The company is also making great progress in building a second Starship launch pad in South Texas while pushing through regulatory milestones for Starship launchpads at Launch Complex 39A and Space Launch Complex 37 in Florida.

Over the following months, SpaceX is aiming to increase its cadence of Falcon missions even further, dealing with the incoming hurricane season, and preparing for another Starship flight. This flight is also set to feature the first-ever recovery attempt of a Super Heavy booster back at the company’s launch site in Starbase, Texas.

Falcon and Dragon

During the second quarter of 2024, SpaceX’s Falcon family of rockets completed a total of 36 missions, adding to the 31 launches completed during the first quarter and totaling 67 missions in 2024 so far. This number of missions accomplished is already higher than the number of missions SpaceX completed just two years ago in 2022 which was 61.

These 36 missions accounted for 58 percent of all orbital launches worldwide between April and June, continuing the trend of being the most active rocket family in the world. This number more than doubles the number of launches by the second country in the world with the most launches, China, which completed 16 missions during the same period. 

Launcher origin Launches Successes Failures Partial Failures
US SpaceX 67 67 0 0
Others 11 11 0 0
China 30 29 0 1
Russia 8 8 0 0
Japan 3 2 1 0
India 2 2 0 0
Iran 2 2 0 0
North Korea 1 0 1 0
TOTAL 124 121 2 1

Table showing the share of launches per place of origin of the launcher and their outcomes as of June 30, 2024

This record-breaking cadence keeps SpaceX on track to complete 135 launches by the end of 2024, an increase of 10 launches from the projection in NSF’s article at the end of the first quarter of the year. This increase comes as a result of a large surge in the launch cadence accomplished by the company during this second quarter of the year. 

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This included launching 14 Falcon 9 missions in a single calendar month during May, the most that SpaceX has been able to accomplish to date. This cadence was accomplished thanks, once again, to record-breaking launchpad turnarounds and droneship turnarounds. 

The three turnaround goals

In early 2023, SpaceX teams at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) set three different turnaround time goals for this launchpad to be accomplished at different points in time. The first one was aiming to accomplish a turnaround time between missions of under four days, something the company achieved already later in the year in August 2023.

The second goal was aimed at lowering this turnaround time further to just under 69 hours by March 2024, with the intention that this would mean a turnaround time of less than three days. While SpaceX did not achieve this in March 2024, the company did accomplish this goal just a month later between the Starlink Group 6-48 and Starlink Group 6-49 missions with a turnaround time of exactly 68 hours. 

The company would once again break this record in June with a turnaround time of 67 hours and 40 minutes between the SES-24/Astra-1P and the Starlink Group 10-3 missions. The third and more challenging goal for the teams will now be to shrink this down to under two days by 2025.

Previous record New record
Space Launch Complex 40 3d 17h 24min 2d 19h 40min
Space Launch Complex 4E 5d  5h 22min 20s 4d 12h

Table comparing record turnaround times at SLC-40 and SLC-4E between NSF’s last SpaceX quarterly roundup and June 30, 2024

In April 2024, SpaceX also broke its turnaround time record at Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) in Vandenberg with a four-and-a-half-day turnaround time between the Starlink Group 8-1 and USSF-62 missions. 

Marine assets

The company also continued its record-breaking use of its marine assets during the second quarter of 2024. In May, SpaceX’s Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship A Shortfall Of Gravitas (ASOG) supported two separate landing and recovery campaigns just three and a half days in between, beating the previous drone ship turnaround record by one whole day.

Ever since the end of last year, SpaceX has been using the Signet Warhorse III tug to move the drone ship in and out to the landing zone. This tug is much more powerful than the ones that the company had been using, which also included the use of the multipurpose recovery vessels Bob and Doug. Under the power of this tug, SpaceX’s East Coast drone ships can move across the ocean at an average speed of eight to nine knots, with peak speeds of up to 12 knots, even when a Falcon 9 booster is on the deck. 

But with only one tug like this, it meant that only one drone ship could benefit from these increased speeds at one time. However, in May 2024, SpaceX hired another similarly powerful tug, Signet Warhorse I, which is now being used in parallel to its sister tug. With both tugs now in use, both East Coast drone ships can travel back and forth to their landing sites much more quickly. A secondary effect of this is that now these droneships can spend slightly more time at Port Canaveral than before and still accomplish a fast turnaround because they don’t take as much time to travel as they did in the past. 

Reuse records

The second quarter of 2024 also saw the first time a Falcon 9 booster hit the 20-flight milestone. The booster that hit this milestone, B1062, also became the first to reach 21 and 22 flights during this quarter, achieving an average cadence of one flight per month. As of the time of writing, another three boosters, B1060, B1061, and B1067, have all reached or surpassed the 20-flight mark. 

One of these boosters, B1060, was expended on its 20th flight during the Galileo FM25-FM27 mission due to the demanding performance conditions imposed by the mission. Another booster, B1087, was also expended on its first and only flight supporting the GOES-U mission as the center core for the Falcon Heavy rocket that carried that mission out.

Two new boosters joined the fleet during the second quarter of 2024, B1072 and B1086, which supported the GOES-U mission as the Falcon Heavy side boosters. Another booster, B1085, was also tested at SpaceX’s rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas. It has been shipped to Florida where it is believed to be flown on the upcoming Crew-9 mission for NASA.

This booster fleet has also been complemented by SpaceX’s fairing fleet. The Starlink Group 10-2 mission in June featured the first time a fairing half was flown for a 20th time, the most currently known for a fairing half. Earlier in May, another fairing half was turned around in less than 13 days which is the shortest turnaround time known for a fairing half. 

SpaceX rarely updates on the status of its fairing fleet but, notably, no fairing halves were lost or expended during the second quarter of the year and only two missions used new fairing halves. The company also used flight-proven fairings on a National Security Space Launch (NSSL) mission for the first time on the USSF-62 mission. 

Cadence struggles

While all of this has been a favorable factor in SpaceX’s goal to achieve 148 launches by the end of the year, there have been several struggles with Falcon’s cadence during June.

During the middle of this month, SpaceX experienced several delays to the Starlink Group 10-2 mission due to bad weather in Florida. This mission was later postponed due to an issue at engine startup that needed the inspection and replacement of the booster that was supposed to launch this mission, B1073. Following this delay, SpaceX also prioritized a customer mission, SES-24/Astra-1P, further delaying any launch from Florida. The mission was later launched successfully using a different booster, B1078.

Due to this, SpaceX experienced the longest gap between launches from Florida since last year at almost 13 days between Starlink Group 10-1 and the launch of SES-24. The weather at Vandenberg was more favorable though, which meant the company was able to complete a mission from its west coast launch site before that SES mission. 

All in all, this turned out to be the longest gap between any SpaceX launches since December 2023 at about 10.5 days in between the Starlink Group 8-8 mission and the Starlink Group 9-1 mission. Coincidentally, this was also the first time any two SpaceX launches had happened back to back from Vandenberg. 

As the Atlantic Ocean enters hurricane season, the weather will play a larger role in SpaceX’s ability to keep up the cadence, potentially having to adjust the liftoff time of missions several times to try and find a gap in the weather. However, SpaceX’s Vice President of Falcon Launch Vehicles thinks the company still has a good chance of hitting its goal of flying 148 times this year and potentially even more than that. 

Notable missions past and future

SpaceX supported nine customer missions during the second quarter of 2024, once again becoming the commercial launch company with the most customer flights during that period. The nine customer missions between April and June 2024 added to the 11 customer missions performed during the first quarter of the year totals 20 customer missions for 2024.

These nine missions included the first launch of Europe’s Galileo global navigation satellites onboard Falcon 9 as a result of the ongoing delays with the development of Ariane 6. This rocket, while set to debut no earlier than July 9, will probably not be ready to carry these Galileo satellites until at least next year. SpaceX also launched EarthCARE, an Earth observation satellite jointly developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). 

This satellite also suffered a change of rockets from Soyuz to Vega C and then to Falcon 9 as a result of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and development struggles with Vega C. Additionally, the latter rocket would have needed a fairing modification to be able to accommodate EarthCARE, which made the change to Falcon 9 much more sensible. 

SpaceX also performed the first Bandwagon mission as part of its Smallsat Rideshare Program, bringing 11 rideshare payloads into a mid-inclination low-Earth orbit. The company also carried out the 10th flight of Falcon Heavy lifting the GOES-U satellite into an enhanced geosynchronous transfer orbit for the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

References to third-party companies, products, services, or projects are for informational purposes only and do not imply endorsement, affiliation, or partnership unless explicitly stated.

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