Catching a 71-metre rocket mid-air and the first-ever private spacewalk
Between 1 January 2024 and 17 December 2024, SpaceX launched 129 commercially operating Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, shattering its previous annual record of 96 launches.
Considering just one of the two rockets that experienced a failure caused a mission loss with satellites failing to reach orbit, its actual success rate for the year was well over 99%.
SpaceX has launched its groundbreaking Falcon 9 rocket more than 425 times since 2010, which equates to about 28 launches per year.
For reference, the world’s most-used space launcher — Russia’s Soyuz — has flown over 1,700 times since 1967, which is about 29 launches per year.
However, the Falcon 9 rocket has an advantage over Soyuz — reusability of its first stage, which enables much faster launch turnarounds between missions.
The Falcon 9’s first stage or booster can land itself on the ground or on a large remote-controlled ship in the ocean instead of other reusable boosters parachuted into the ocean.
This saves time and money on booster refurbishment and minimises the need to produce new ones, reducing rocket launch costs significantly.
At least three boosters have been launched over 20 times before being decommissioned.
According to CareYaya Health Technologies CEO, SpaceX has reduced the cost of launching a payload into orbit from $25,000 per kilogram to $1,500, a 94% decline.
Most of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches were used to deliver satellites for its cutting-edge low-earth orbit (LEO) Internet service Starlink.
However, SpaceX also delivered launched satellites for private and government research, the US Space Force, as well as competing satellite Internet companies.
However, the Falcon 9’s most noteworthy launch in 2024 was the first mission of Polaris Dawn, conducted by SpaceX and privately funded by Shift4 CEO Jared Isaacman.
Launched on 10 September 2024, the mission saw Isaacman and three other crewmembers spend nearly five days in orbit in SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, reaching its highest altitude at 1,408km.
That is the furthest humans have been from Earth since the Apollo Moon missions more than 50 years ago.
They also completed the first commercial spacewalk at an altitude between 190km and 740km above the earth, which was also the debut mission for SpaceX’s extravehicular activity spacesuits.
In addition, the team conducted tests of Starlink’s laser-based communications in space, eky for future missions to the Moon and Mars, and conducted health res
Starships were meant to fly
But what has set news headlines ablaze in 2024 is SpaceX’s substantial progress on its next-generation rocket, Starship.
With its first and second stages measuring 121.3 metres tall, a 9-metre diameter, and a mass of approximately 5,000 tonnes, the Starship is the tallest and biggest rocket ever built.
The 33 Raptor engines on its first stage, known as Super Heavy, also make it the most powerful rocket, providing 69.9 meganewtons of thrust.
That compares with 34.5 meganewtons on NASA’s Saturn V, used for the US’s lunar missions.
It also has nearly double the thrust of Nasa’s latest rocket, the Space Launch System, and a future iteration is planned to offer triple the thrust.
While initially intended to increase SpaceX’s satellite deliveries, the ultimate goal of Starship is to make humanity a multiplanetary species.
SpaceX has been contracted by Nasa to take humans back to the Moon in its Artemis programme, with crewed missions scheduled for 2026.
That same year, Starship could take its first of many uncrewed trip to Mars before it will eventually take humans to the Red Planet.
SpaceX is designing and developing Starship and its Super Heavy booster to be full reusable and it has scored big wins in this goal in 2024.
After its first two fully-stacked test launches in 2023, SpaceX performed four more test launches of Starship in the past year.
All these launches were successful, with the Super Heavy boosters and Starship prototypes returning to Earth in a controlled manner.
All of what SpaceX is doing with Starship is new territory and each seemingly iterative step is regarded as a major milestone in the broader space community.
However, the fifth flight achieved something unprecedented and may one day be considered one of the biggest achievements in space flight ever.
While SpaceX has successfully landed its Falcon 9 boosters and Starship prototypes with stabilising feet, it had a more ambitious — some would say completely mad — plan for Starship.
SpaceX fitted two arms to the launch tower at Starbase in Boca Chica, its testing ground for Starship for the fastest possible rocket refurbishment and reuse.
The plan it had in mind for this system — informally dubbed the “chopsticks” — was to catch the Super Heavy booster as it came down in a controlled descent.
SpaceX silenced the doubters — and perhaps even its own reservations — when it pulled the catch off on its first try, with the 71-metre Super Heavy squeezing in perfectly with two relatively small “feet” to rest on.
The room for error was so small that even a few meters’ rotation would have resulted in the booster falling to the ground.
Big plans for 2025
There are many more exciting developments from SpaceX to look forward to in 2025.
The company plans to substantially increase its test cadence for Starship, with 25 more launches in the coming year.
A second-generation Starship and Super Heavy booster are set to take flight as part of those tests.
SpaceX also hopes to use the tower arms to catch the Starship, as it did with Super Heavy in Flight 5.
The company also has numerous Falcon 9 launches on its schedule, which will help it grow its Starlink satellite fleet to keep up with increased demand for the service and the expansion of its direct-to-cell capability.
This allows regular 4G smartphones to send texts and make calls while roaming on Starlink satellites and will later also support data services.
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