SpaceX: We are targeting 170 launches in 2025
According to a statement by a SpaceX official during a telephone press conference on May 28, 2025, the company is now hoping to complete 170 total launches in 2025.
“We’re targeting 170 launches by the end of the year,” Anne Mason, director of national security space launch at SpaceX, said during a call with reporters on Wednesday (May 28).
…”I always find it amazing that this cadence has become somewhat normal,” Mason added during Wednesday’s call, which served to preview SpaceX’s planned Friday (May 30) launch of the GPS III SV08 satellite for the U.S. Space Force. “But if we look back just five years ago, in 2020 when we launched roughly 25 times, which is still a healthy rate at twice a month, and now launching on average every two to three days — I think this demonstrates how Falcon’s reusability and reliability, plus the hard work and dedication of the SpaceX team, has been critical to supporting assured access to space,” she said.
Last year SpaceX set a record of 137 successful orbital launches, a number that also exceeded what the entire world had accomplished yearly for most of the space age since Sputnik in 1957. This new goal however appears to be a reduction from its earlier hopes. Near the start of the year SpaceX officials had predicted it would complete 180 launches.
There is also the possibility that Mason above was only referring to Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches, and not counting the test flights of Starship and Superheavy.
Either way, SpaceX continues to prove that freedom and private enterprise can do far more than government, and do it faster and cheaper as well.
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According to a statement by a SpaceX official during a telephone press conference on May 28, 2025, the company is now hoping to complete 170 total launches in 2025.
“We’re targeting 170 launches by the end of the year,” Anne Mason, director of national security space launch at SpaceX, said during a call with reporters on Wednesday (May 28).
…”I always find it amazing that this cadence has become somewhat normal,” Mason added during Wednesday’s call, which served to preview SpaceX’s planned Friday (May 30) launch of the GPS III SV08 satellite for the U.S. Space Force. “But if we look back just five years ago, in 2020 when we launched roughly 25 times, which is still a healthy rate at twice a month, and now launching on average every two to three days — I think this demonstrates how Falcon’s reusability and reliability, plus the hard work and dedication of the SpaceX team, has been critical to supporting assured access to space,” she said.
Last year SpaceX set a record of 137 successful orbital launches, a number that also exceeded what the entire world had accomplished yearly for most of the space age since Sputnik in 1957. This new goal however appears to be a reduction from its earlier hopes. Near the start of the year SpaceX officials had predicted it would complete 180 launches.
There is also the possibility that Mason above was only referring to Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches, and not counting the test flights of Starship and Superheavy.
Either way, SpaceX continues to prove that freedom and private enterprise can do far more than government, and do it faster and cheaper as well.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
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170 is quite a reasonable number – and, yes, Ms. Mason was referring to Falcon launches only. If the currently scheduled Starlink launch from Vandy goes off tomorrow, SpaceX will have launched 66 times in five months and launched 16 times in May alone. Assuming it can maintain – not even increase – this cadence for the rest of the year – it would launch 112 more Falcons. That would yield a 2025 total of 178, comfortably above the revised target of 170 and nearly up to the 180 target established early in the year. Even if SpaceX can average only 15 launches per month over the remainder of 2025, that would still come to an additional 105 launches. That would allow SpaceX to make its newly revised target even if the Vandy launch scheduled for tomorrow does not go off as planned. It would also represent an average advance of three Falcon launches per month over what it managed to do in 2024.
SpaceX may have to ramp up their cadence a little bit. They are currently on schedule for 158 annual launches as of the end of May (156, if we don’t count Starship).
Right now they are at about 13 launches per month, they need to get to 15 monthly launches to reach 170 by the end of the year.