An executive for SpaceX reports the company plans to launch 24 Starlink missions next year as it continues toward its goal of a broadband constellation that can one day include 12,000 satellites.
Gwynne Shotwell is both the president and chief executive officer of SpaceX. Shotwell says the company plans to average two launches a month and will also execute launches for customers. The announcement by Shotwell took place at the World Satellite Business Conference in Paris, France.
Shotwell says SpaceX is open to launching more than the two dozen planned missions if necessary but this will depend on the demand for customer missions. Shotwell says the company will place the needs of customers before its own need to launch broadband satellites. She says the company will launch more Starlink missions if some customers pull out from planned missions. However, no customer missions will be dropped in favor of the satellites. The present plan is to launch four Starlink missions in 2020.
The company suffered through many delays in customer missions in 2015 and 2016 due to failures with its Falcon 9 rocket. Shotwell says SpaceX is presently caught up on all missions to the point that rockets are available before customer missions are planned. She did not specify, however, whether next year’s Starlink missions will be launched using only the Falcon 9 or if the company’s Falcon Heavy will also be used.
SpaceX has flown 10 rockets so far in 2019. Eight of these launches have been Falcon 9 missions and the other two have used the Falcon Heavy. The company is expected to execute about eight more launches before the year ends for a total of 18. The original plan for 2019 was also 24 launches.
The first 60 Starlink satellites were launched by SpaceX in May and the Falcon 9 was used for these launches. Five of these original satellites will be deorbited. Three of them are being deorbited due to malfunctions and the other two are being used to test the company’s deorbiting capabilities.
The Federal Communications Commission will play a role in determining when SpaceX will begin offering broadband satellite services to consumers, as well as, what coverage the service will have. This is because SpaceX is currently awaiting a decision by the Commission on a company request to extend the number of orbital planes it can use from 24 to 72. If this extension is granted, Starlink can extend its customer reach and cut down on the amount of time it will take to provide services to some customers.
