The American company SpaceX has broken the annual record of launches of its own Falcon 9 heavy rocket, SpaceNews reports .
The publication notes that in 2021, as of December 3, 27 launches of such carriers were made. The previous record, including 26 Falcon 9 launches, was set in 2020.
SpaceNews recalls that "many of the Falcon 9 missions in 2021 carried payloads for Starlink."
In December, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced on Twitter that the company had changed the orbits of some Starlink satellites to reduce the likelihood of a collision with space debris.
In November, Musk called the deadline for the orbital flight of the reusable Starship transport system, considered the world's largest rocket. According to him, the system can go into orbit in January 2022. This will happen if SpaceX manages to complete the construction of an appropriate launch pad in Texas, conduct the necessary tests of the rocket and obtain a launch permit from the US Federal Aviation Administration.
Last December, ArsTechnica reported that SpaceX in 2020, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, broke its own record for the number of rocket launches in 2018.
Ivan Potapov
