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SpaceX executive forecasts 6 Falcon Heavy launches in 12 months
A SpaceX sales executive predicts that the company will launch Falcon Heavy, currently the most powerful operational rocket in the world, up to six times in the next 12 months.
Following years of delays and anticipation as SpaceX waited for the right moment to move forward with the massive rocket, Falcon Heavy debuted in February 2018 by launching CEO Elon Musk’s original Tesla Roadster into interplanetary space. The debut was nearly flawless and only marred by the loss of one of the rocket’s three first-stage boosters, which failed to touch down on a drone ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. In just a small taste of things to come, Falcon Heavy’s second launch followed 14 months later.
That April 2019 launch marked the rocket’s first commercial mission and sent a large communications satellite into an extra-energetic geostationary transfer orbit. Less than three months later, Falcon Heavy completed its third launch – a demonstration mission for the US Air Force. Such a quick turnaround raised hopes, but that optimism was unfortunately unfounded. 39 months later, it’s still hard to say when Falcon Heavy will finally launch for the fourth time.
Contrary to the connotations such a long gap between launches might evoke, Falcon Heavy’s manifest has grown at a respectable rate and currently sits at 11 launches. That includes two commercial satellite launches and three launches for the US military, but NASA (directly and indirectly) is by far SpaceX’s most eager Falcon Heavy customer with six firm launches booked and options for another two.
For years, however, all supposedly near-term Falcon Heavy launches have been more or less indefinitely delayed by payload problems. SpaceX has had no issues building and qualifying a huge amount of Falcon Heavy hardware for those missions, but the lack of payloads ready to fly has forced the company to find places to store all seven boosters – more than a third of its fleet – indefinitely.
That may finally change. Speaking on a panel at the 2022 World Satellite Business Week, SpaceX Vice President of Commercial Sales Tom Ochinero told the audience that the company has six Falcon Heavy launches scheduled in the next 12 months.
It’s possible that Falcon Heavy could end its launch hiatus and kick off that six-mission streak in the very near future. Spaceflight Now, a reliable source of launch schedules, recently updated its Launch Schedule to move Falcon Heavy’s USSF-44 mission up from late 2022 or 2023 to October 2022. Next Spaceflight, another reliable primary source, concurs. Both sources also agree that two additional missions (ViaSat-3 and USSF-67) could also launch this year.
For USSF-44 and ViaSat-3, Falcon Heavy will launch both sets of payloads directly into geostationary orbit – a type of mission SpaceX has never attempted. The rocket’s upper stage will need to survive a roughly six-hour coast in space and a trip through Earth’s radiation belts before firing up for a long burn to circularize its orbit around 36,000 kilometers (~22,300 mi) above the planet’s surface. To leave the upper stage with enough propellant for such a challenging task, SpaceX will intentionally expend one of Falcon Heavy’s three boosters during each launch. It remains to be seen which mission will launch first.
Given the history of all six of Falcon Heavy’s near-term missions, it’s safer to assume that the rocket isn’t going to launch at all in 2022 until a fully assembled vehicle has rolled out to the launch pad. For a late October launch, the USSF-44 payload(s) would need to arrive in Florida any day now, and SpaceX would need to start transporting Falcon Heavy boosters to Pad 39A’s integration hangar within a week or two to begin assembling the rocket. If that process begins, it’s likely that one or several of those distinct boosters will be spotted on their way to Pad 39A.
Including USSF-44, unofficial public manifests like Spaceflight Now and Next Spaceflight agree with Ochinero’s assertion that SpaceX has six Falcon Heavy missions tentatively scheduled in the next 12 months. Unspecified US military contractors are currently stumbling over themselves to prepare several satellites for launch: USSF-44 NET October 2022, USSF-67 NET December 2022, and USSF-52 NET April 2023. ViaSat and EchoStar contractors Boeing and Maxar are also struggling to prepare two massive commercial communications satellites for launches in November 2022 and January 2023. Finally, NASA’s Psyche asteroid explorer could be ready for its second launch attempt as early as July 2023 if the agency decides to proceed.
Delays are virtually guaranteed. Stay tuned for updates.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s AI Grok Bot can now handle banking while your Tesla FSD handles the road
Elon Musk says Grok Bot can manage your finances through linked bank and investment accounts.
Grok Bot now wants access to your wallet, with SpaceXAI rolling out a new Finance integration for its agent platform that lets users link bank, credit card and investment accounts thereby letting their Bots help manage spending, investments and more. Elon Musk amplified the announcement on X with a short endorsement, “Grok Bot can manage your finances.”
The feature builds on two earlier steps. In early September, Grok gained the ability to answer questions about spending, savings, investments and cash flow using accounts connected through Plaid, starting with users in the U.S. Before that, on August 28, SpaceXAI let Grok Bot buy things online through Link, with users approving every spend request and the Bot receiving a single use card for each payment.
Musk has already shown how far he wants users to push it. In late August, when Tesla investor account Teslaconomics said he was weighing whether to give Grok Bot access to his bank accounts, Musk replied, “Try it out. If Grok Bot messes up, we will make you whole.” That promise goes beyond SpaceXAI’s consumer terms, which make users responsible for what their agents do and generally cap the company’s liability at the greater of fees paid or $100. SpaceXAI’s own documentation recommends requiring approval for purchases and financial transfers.
For Tesla owners, the update lands five days after Tesla brought Grok Bot into its vehicles, letting drivers hand off errands by voice while FSD (Supervised) handles the road. Bot access inside the car is currently limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers, though Connectors are open to anyone signed into Grok. With Finance linked, a driver could ask for a spending summary or a check on upcoming bills during the commute.
Grok’s role in the car has grown quickly since Tesla’s Summer Update let it control cabin features by voice. We have been using Grok Bot in our own Tesla for several weeks, and here’s how our latest test went.
Elon Musk
SpaceX just got the green light Starship has waited years for
The FAA has cleared Starship Flight 14, setting up SpaceX’s first orbital attempt on Monday.
SpaceX has cleared the last regulatory hurdle standing between Starship and its first trip to orbit. The Federal Aviation Administration issued the launch license for Starship Flight 14 late Saturday, keeping the mission on track for liftoff Monday, September 28, from Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas.
The 75 minute launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. Central, and Boca Chica Beach closures are also scheduled for September 29 and 30 as backup dates. This will be Starship’s first revenue generating mission.
The license was the missing piece after SpaceX completed a full wet dress rehearsal with Booster 21 and Ship 41 on September 24. At the time, the company said the flight remained on track pending regulatory approval. Because Flight 14 flies an orbital profile, the FAA had to sign off on a modified license that met its safety, payload and financial responsibility requirements.
Observers combing through the new FAA paperwork also noticed that lightning no longer appears among Starship’s listed launch hazards. If that holds, it matters more for where Starship is headed than for Monday’s attempt. Florida and Louisiana, home to LC-39A and the planned Starbase Louisiana site, see some of the most frequent lightning in the United States.
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
Flight 14 is the mission SpaceX has been building toward for months. Ship 41 will carry 26 Starlink V3 satellites, the first operational V3 units to be deployed, and attempt roughly six orbits at about 275 kilometers over a flight lasting just under 10 hours. SpaceX says the ship will only perform its orbital insertion burn after flight controllers confirm enough hardware redundancy remains for the deorbit burn at the end of the mission. Ship 41 is targeting a splashdown in the Pacific west of Chile, while Super Heavy will return to the Gulf of Mexico.
The date carries some symbolism as well. A Monday launch would come 10 years and one day after Elon Musk first presented the Interplanetary Transport System, the design that became Starship, at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.
SpaceX has not announced what comes next, but air traffic planning slides reported this week, list Flight 15 no earlier than October 19 and a first Starship launch from LC-39A in Florida no earlier than October 30. Both dates depend on how Monday goes.
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SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
SpaceX launched the classified USSF-385 mission from Vandenberg, landing its booster on a tenth flight.
SpaceX launched another classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from California early Saturday morning, and the Falcon 9 booster that carried it landed on a drone ship in the Pacific for the tenth time. The USSF-385 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:00 a.m. PT.
Booster B1100 touched down on Of Course I Still Love You roughly eight and a half minutes after liftoff. It was the booster’s tenth flight and tenth successful landing, following the NROL-95 national security mission and eight Starlink launches. Its previous flight, a Starlink Group 15 mission on August 22, came just 35 days earlier. SpaceX ended its livestream shortly after the landing, which is standard for classified payloads, and neither the company nor the Space Force has said what the rocket carried.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-385 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/CAdbx85Ydy
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 26, 2026
USSF-385 is the fourth Space Force launch from the same Vandenberg pad in roughly six weeks, following USSF-366 on August 15, USSF-153 on September 10, and USSF-259 on September 17. When SpaceX flew USSF-366 in August, independent trackers noted that the rocket’s stage drop zones matched SpaceX’s Starlink Group 15 missions, pointing to Starshield, the government version of the Starlink satellite bus. The Space Force later cataloged 23 satellites after both USSF-366 and USSF-153, while USSF-259 placed 17 satellites into a different orbital plane, per KeepTrack. Launch databases describe USSF-385 the same way, though the payload remains officially unidentified.
The cadence lines up with the contracts, because in July, the Space Force awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion in task orders for 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027. SpaceX also holds contracts to build pieces of that same network, which pushed its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion.
Saturday’s flight was also the sixth and final Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg in September, according to Spaceflight Now, while only one Falcon 9 flew from the East Coast this month as SpaceX shifts its Florida infrastructure toward Starship. Launch trackers list it as SpaceX’s 112th mission of 2026 and the 108th Falcon 9 flight of the year, with SLC-4E turned around about six and a half days after its previous launch.
The West Coast pad will not stay quiet for long, considering SpaceX has another Starlink mission scheduled from SLC-4E on September 30. Meanwhile, in Texas, the company is two days away from Starship Flight 14, which is targeting Monday at 7:15 a.m. CT for the vehicle’s first attempt to reach orbit.
Elon Musk’s AI Grok Bot can now handle banking while your Tesla FSD handles the road
SpaceX just got the green light Starship has waited years for
