SpaceX set for record-breaking 2020 manifest

For Elon Musk’s SpaceX, 2019 will go into the hall of fame as a spectacular year with record shattering endeavours culminating with the fourth launch of the startship satellites series scheduled for Jan 3 from Cape Canaveral Florida. That said, it seems that the best of SpaceX is yet to come and 2020 would be yet another record shattering year, when SpaceX aims to launch its first crewed mission with NASA Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley ride to the International Space Station aboard the Crew Dragon capsule.

SpaceX completed its final mission of the year on Dec. 16 with the successful launch of JCSAT-18/Kacific1 from Cape Canaveral, Fla. It was the company’s 13th launch of 2019, SpaceX’s lowest yearly launch total since 2016. However, the Falcon manifest for 2020 promises to be far busier.

The slump in launches this year was a result of two major factors. Firstly, SpaceX was no longer grinding through a backlog caused by two anomalies in 2015 and 2016. Commercial launch contracts for geostationary communications satellites have also stagnated.

2020 will be a different story, with SpaceX set to smash their previous record of launches in a year, 21, which was set in 2018. The expected increase is due to Starlink, the launch provider’s new internet constellation. SpaceX is planning to launch a batch of Starlink satellites every two weeks, which would amount to approximately 24 launches on top of their existing contracted missions.

The most recent Falcon Heavy launch occurred in June 2019, meaning that Falcon Heavy will go well over a year between flights.

While SpaceX will not be able to fly flight-proven boosters on the upcoming Falcon Heavy mission, the large majority of the company’s upcoming manifest will feature reused boosters.

Currently, B1048 has flown the most out of any SpaceX booster with four flights under its belt. B1048 is expected to make its fifth flight during a Starlink mission in the first quarter of the year. B1049 is also expected to fly for a fifth time after its mission in early January.

It remains to be seen how many times SpaceX will reuse a single booster in 2020, but the company is set to break numerous reusability records.

Decacorn CapitalDecember 30, 2019