It’s too early to mention retirement, but astute observers of the space industry have noticed that SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket isn’t launching as often as it used to.
The decline has been minor so far, and does not indicate any problems with SpaceX or the Falcon 9. Rather, it is a manifestation of SpaceX’s eagerness to focus on the much larger Starship rocket, an enabler of what the company wants to do in space: missions to the Moon and Mars landings, orbital data centers, and next-generation Starlink.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX planned 165 launches with Falcon 9 rockets last year (no Falcon Heavy missions), that translates to 134 Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches in 2024 and 96 Falcon flights in 2023. The company plans to launch “probably 140, 145-ish” Falcons in 2026, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told TIME earlier this year. “This year we will still launch a lot, but not as much,” he said. “And then we’ll shut down our launches as Starship comes online.”
turn off the gas
We’re starting to see what the long, slow tail-off will look like. The changes are most evident at Cape Canaveral, Florida, where SpaceX launches the bulk of its rockets. Until last December, SpaceX launched Falcon 9s with regularity from two pads on Florida’s Space Coast-One at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and the other on military property at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station a few miles south.
SpaceX is converting the site at Kennedy, known as Launch Complex-39A, for Starship launches. The LC-39A is out of rotation for Falcon 9 launches, although it remains available for occasional flights of the more powerful triple-core Falcon Heavy. SpaceX last week launched the first Falcon Heavy in a year and a half from an LC-39A, and a few more Falcon Heavy flights are scheduled for later this year.
Activity is also decreasing at SpaceX’s oldest launch site, Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral. Last month, SpaceX retired one of its two Florida-based marine landing platforms from service for future use as transporters to carry Starship and Super Heavy boosters from SpaceX’s factory in South Texas to Florida. SpaceX is building a second Starship factory at Kennedy Space Center, but officials want to begin Starship flights from Florida before the factory is operational.
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