On Thursday, December 29 at 11:38 p.m. PT, SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket to kick off the ISI EROS C-3 mission to a low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
This particular Falcon 9 booster saw its 11th launch and landing, previously supporting Crew-1, Crew-2, SXM-8, CRS-23, IXPE, Transporter-4, Transporter-5, Globalstar FM15, and two Starlink missions. The record reuse for a Falcon 9 booster is 15 launches and landings, set earlier this month.
According to SpaceX, this launch was the company’s record 61st and final launch of 2022, “nearly double our record of 31 launches set last year,” said Elon Musk’s company on Friday.
“On average, SpaceX launched every 6 days from one of our three sites with 92% of missions completed with flight-proven first stage rocket boosters, and Falcon 9 now holds the world record for most launches of a single vehicle type in a single year,” said SpaceX.
“Most importantly, SpaceX successfully delivered our customers’ payloads to orbit, deployed additional Starlink satellites that add more capacity to our network, and flew critical cargo and astronauts to the @space_station and safely returned them back home Earth,” concluded SpaceX.
Musk said last night, “Launch 61 of 2022. Congrats SpaceX!”.
You can watch the replay of the ISI EROS C-3 mission below:
The next SpaceX launch and the first for 2023 is tentatively scheduled for January 2, with the Transporter 6 (Dedicated SSO Rideshare) mission from Space Launch Complex 40, in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
