A record-breaking number of rockets were launched by Elon Musk's SpaceX on Friday, surpassing the previous mark of 31 flights set last year, all as part of a frenetic effort to place its own broadband satellites in space.
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SpaceX's 32nd Falcon 9 rocket launch of 2022 comes as the firm is racing to develop a network of broadband satellites named Starlink, a service with hundreds of thousands of internet users.
"Congrats to SpaceX team on record number of launches!" Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter following SpaceX's successful launch of 46 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit.
Vandenberg Space Force Base in California served as the company's launchpad for the operation. Almost 3,000 Starlink satellites have been launched by SpaceX thus far.
To meet its target of 52 orbital flights by the end of the year, SpaceX is on track to use the reusable Falcon 9 rocket up to 15 times, almost tripling its yearly launch frequency.
The vast majority of these missions have been or will be Starlink missions conducted inside the company.
In recent months, the company has changed its attention from producing Falcon 9 rockets to maintaining a fleet of those already produced, spending substantially in infrastructure for repairing boosters under tight deadlines.
Reusable Crew Dragons - gumdrop-shaped spacecraft that launch on the Falcon 9 and carry people to orbit and the International Space Station - are also a part of the company's fleet.
Because of Falcon 9's rapid reusability and the advantage of employing in-house rockets, SpaceX has sent Starlink satellites into orbit faster than its competitors in the satellite internet race, such as satellite operator OneWeb.
Russia's Soyuz rocket has been used to launch OneWeb's satellites, which are approaching completion of a constellation with fewer satellites. After abandoning its Soyuz contract due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the business expects to deploy the Falcon 9 this year.
(With inputs from Reuters)
