Elon Musk says SpaceX plans to launch its most used rocket once a week on average this year.
“If things go well, Falcon will launch on average about once a week in 2022, delivering about 2/3 of the entire payload from Earth into orbit,” the billionaire tweeted Thursday.
According to the SpaceX website, the company's 70-meter Falcon 9 rocket is a reusable launch vehicle that has flown nearly 140 times in total since it was first built.
His tweet was a response to an Ars Technica reporter who tweeted that the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket had completed 111 successive successful missions, more than any orbital rocket, according to the reporter.
Musk's tweet confirms recent reports that his aerospace company planned to launch 52 rockets into orbit this year, beating its previous record of 31 launches last year.
SpaceX launched 49 of its Starlink satellites into orbit on Thursday using a Falcon 9 rocket. It was the company's sixth launch this year and a second launch in February.
SpaceX launched four Falcon 9 rockets in January, between January 6 and 31, which means the company plans to send an average of one rocket into space each week.
The company's fourth launch in 2022 was delayed four times in a row due to bad weather and after a Royal Caribbean cruise ship entered the launch zone danger zone, forcing the mission to abort seconds before takeoff.
