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The year 2025 will soon become a record breaking year with the highest number of rocket launches from Florida.
2024 set an all-time record, with 93 launches in Florida. However, the 94th liftoff will take place on Sunday, November 9, breaking the record for the fourth consecutive year.
This record could have been broken only on Saturday, but the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was rescheduled for Sunday. The rocket will launch 29 Starlink broadband satellites into low-Earth orbit from Pad 39A at NASA Kennedy Center between 3:10 a.m. and 7:10 a.m. on Sunday.
Hours after SapceX launch, its record-breaking 94th launch is set to take place. And the launch will be from SpaceX’s only major rival in the space sector: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.
Blue Origin’s second New Glenn rocket is also scheduled to launch on Sunday. This launch will be for NASA, as a Blue Origin rocket will send twin ESCAPADE spacecraft to study the magnetosphere of Mars. This rocket will be launched from Launch Complex 36 between 2:45 pm and 5:11 pm local time.
Reason behind huge increase in rocket launches
SpaceX is the company responsible for 87 of the 92 launches from Florida this year.
Falcon 9 rockets were used in all 87 of these launches. Most of them can either return to land or touch down on top of drone ships in the Atlantic Ocean.
Kiko Dontchev, vice president of launch, talking about issues with outdated rocket technology Florida TodaySaid, “The airplane takes off, but the wings fall off and the fuselage collapses – and the only thing that makes it to its destination (is) just a few people.”
He said new methods of refurbishing and relaunching boosters increase the launch rate “to a mission speed the world has never seen before.”
“Reusability is what has enabled this huge leap. And if you think about the arc of humanity, what happens when a new mode of transportation is unlocked? You get this huge leap in capability, right?” Donchev said this during a conversation at The Economist’s Space Economy Summit at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, the publication reports.
“Whether it’s a railroad, an interstate highway, watercraft to steamships, that’s what reusability has done. That’s what the Falcon 9 has done. It’s allowed an entire economy to be built in low-Earth orbit,” he also said.
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