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SpaceX ties 42-year-old Soviet record with last launch of 2022
SpaceX has tied a 42-year-old record with its 61st and final Falcon rocket launch of 2022.
Also marking the latest in a calendar year SpaceX has launched a rocket, a Falcon 9 lifted off from the company’s Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) SLC-4E pad at 11:38 pm PST, Thursday, December 29th (7:38 UTC 30 Dec) carrying a tiny Earth observation satellite for Israeli company ImageSat International. Built by Israeli Aircraft Industries, the EROS C3 space telescope is the third of its kind and likely weighed just 400 kilograms (~900 lb) at liftoff, utilizing less than 1/40th of Falcon 9’s available performance in a reusable configuration.
The extremely light payload precluded the need for SpaceX to send drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) several hundred kilometers into the Pacific Ocean, likely saving several hundred thousand dollars. Instead, Falcon 9 booster B1061 lifted off for the 11th time, carried EROS C3 and an expendable Falcon 9 upper stage most of the way into space, and then boosted back towards the California coast to land less than a quarter-mile from SLC-4E.
EROS C3 was SpaceX’s 170th consecutively successful Falcon launch, 160th successful landing, and 132nd launch with a reused booster. But more importantly, the mission was also SpaceX’s 61st successful Falcon launch this year, tying a record that hasn’t been touched since 1980.
The update that's rolling out to the fleet makes full use of the front and rear steering travel to minimize turning circle. In this case a reduction of 1.6 feet just over the air— Wes (@wmorrill3) April 16, 2024
In 1980, after two decades of gradual buildup, the Soviet Union managed to launch variants of its R-7 workhorse rocket 64 times in one calendar year. 61 of those launches were successful, setting a record that has been left unchallenged for decades. Only the R-7 family ever posed a threat to its own record, managing 55 successful launches in 1988, but its launch cadence – heavily driven by disposable Cold War reconnaissance satellites – plummeted with the fall of the Soviet Union and has never recovered.
Only in 2022, almost half a century later, has the R-7 family finally found a worthy challenger for its annual launch cadence record. That the challenger is a private company that had to legally force its way into parts of the US launch industry is arguably one of the deepest possible condemnations of the relative stagnancy US space launch capabilities experienced after the Apollo Program. But it also makes SpaceX’s achievement – accomplished with rockets that did not exist before the late 2000s – even more impressive.
Similar to the Soviet peak, an extraordinary period during which the R-7 family successfully launched 1181 times in 22 years, there is one main driving force behind the recent surge in SpaceX’s launch cadence. But instead of the Cold War, the force behind Falcon’s rise is SpaceX’s own constellation of Starlink internet satellites. Since operational launches began in November 2019, Starlink satellites were the primary payload on 66 of the last 125 Falcon launches. In 2022 alone, SpaceX launched 34 Starlink missions.
In 2021, SpaceX completed 31 Falcon 9 launches, 17 of which were Starlink missions. In 2022, SpaceX’s 61 Falcon launches nearly doubled that peak year over year. For a few reasons, that annual doubling is unlikely to repeat itself anytime soon, if ever, but CEO Elon Musk has still issued SpaceX a target of 100 launches in 2023 – a 64% increase year-over-year.
Even that target will be a major challenge, but the EROS C3 mission holds a clue about one of the ways SpaceX can squeeze more out of its existing rockets and launch pads without needing to smash records. SpaceX’s busiest pad, Cape Canaveral’s LC-40, managed nine launches in the last three months of 2022. Its Kennedy Space Center LC-39A pad managed 18 launches over the year. Finally, EROS C3 was SLC-4E’s 13th launch of 2022.
While the California pad came in last, it does not have the same cadence constraints (Dragon and Falcon Heavy missions) as Pad 39A. And less than 12 days ago, SpaceX’s West Coast SLC-4E helped launch NASA and France’s SWOT water observation satellite. Having repeatedly demonstrated the ability to launch two Falcon 9 rockets in less than 12 days, SLC-4E has the potential to carry much more weight in the future. If SpaceX can improve the pad’s ease of use, it could feasibly support 20-25 launches per year, and potentially 30+ with further optimization.
With SLC-4E operating at a cadence of 25 launches per year and LC-40 and LC-39A both operating as-is, SpaceX could launch approximately 80 Falcon rockets in 2023. Ultimately, if SpaceX can maintain the Falcon family’s unprecedented streak of successful launches and improve the uptime of its existing pads, it’s hard to see the R-7 family’s annual cadence record making it to 2024. SpaceX also has a clear (but steep) path to 90+ Falcon launches next year, though simply mirroring its 2022 performance would still be an extraordinary feat.
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SpaceX set to launch astronauts and a classified Falcon Heavy mission on the same day
SpaceX plans three launches Thursday, including Crew-13 astronauts and Falcon Heavy’s first classified NRO mission.
SpaceX is lining up one of the busiest single days in its history, and the company offered a preview on Wednesday morning with a simple post on X: “Sunrise at pad 40.” The video and photos show Falcon 9 standing at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, roughly a day before it is scheduled to carry four astronauts to the International Space Station.
That launch is only the first of three SpaceX missions planned for Thursday, October 1, across both coasts.
Sunrise at pad 40 pic.twitter.com/J7Qme4VvIX
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 30, 2026
Crew-13 is targeting liftoff at 11:10 a.m. ET, with a backup opportunity Friday at 10:47 a.m. ET. NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins will command the mission, with NASA’s Luke Delaney as pilot and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov serving as mission specialists. According to NASA, Dragon is set to dock with the forward port of the station’s Harmony module around 8 p.m. ET, less than nine hours after launch. Watkins is the only member of the crew who has flown before, and Kutryk will become the first Canadian to reach orbit through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
The Falcon 9 booster is flying for the third time after supporting Crew-12 and a Starlink mission, and it will attempt a landing at Landing Zone 40 beside the pad. That site made its debut in February when the Crew-12 booster touched down there, as Teslarati reported at the time. Crew-13 will relieve the Crew-12 astronauts, who have been aboard the station since the middle of February.
On the West Coast, another Falcon 9 is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in a window running from 2:18 to 3:16 p.m. ET, a flight NASASpaceflight lists as a Transporter rideshare mission.
The day is set to close at 11:53 p.m. ET, when Falcon Heavy launches from Launch Complex 39A with NROL-97, the first National Reconnaissance Office payload ever to fly on the rocket. SpaceX rolled the vehicle out to the pad Tuesday night. Its two side boosters, which previously flew GOES-U, ViaSat-3 F3 and NASA’s Roman Space Telescope, will return to Landing Zones 1 and 2, while a new center core will be expended in the Atlantic. The Roman launch took place on August 30, so NROL-97 will come barely a month later as Falcon Heavy’s third flight of 2026 and 14th overall.
NASA taps SpaceX to launch the telescope that could unlock new worlds
If all three Florida boosters land as planned, it would be the first time the Space Coast has seen landings at LZ-40, LZ-1 and LZ-2 on the same day, according to the Orlando Sentinel, which has warned residents in Brevard, Orange and Volusia counties that more than one sonic boom is possible.
The schedule arrives just three days after Starship reached orbit for the first time on Flight 14 from Starbase, Texas, deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites. If Thursday’s missions stay on time, SpaceX will have flown Starship, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy from four different pads in about four days.
Crew-13 is also the start of a longer run for Dragon. NASA recently added Crew-15, Crew-16 and Crew-17 to SpaceX’s contract in a $946 million modification, keeping Dragon as the agency’s only operational ride to the station while Boeing’s Starliner remains grounded.
Although the two vehicles are built for completely different use cases, Tesla utilized engineering expertise while developing both the Cybercab and Semi to build a thermal architecture that would fit both vehicles. Of course, with some slight revisions.
The development was noted by Lars Moravy and Dan Priestley last week at Tesla’s Semi Handover event in Sparks, Nevada, where the company showed off its dedicated production facility for the Class 8 truck.
🚨 Tesla designed the integrated thermal systems for Cybercab and Semi at the same time as the vehicles were both in development
Tesla wanted to build one thermal system that worked with both vehicles, apart from small modifications.
Semi and Cybercab share parts 🤯 pic.twitter.com/KmzSsUbrcg
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) September 25, 2026
Tesla’s decision to develop one thermal architecture for both the Cybercab and Semi is one of the more revealing engineering choices in the company’s 2026 lineup:
“We designed it at the same time we designed the Cybercab and we said okay we’re going to take our most efficient vehicle and our biggest vehicle and we’re going to take one thermal system and make it work for both.”
Core parts, meaning the compressor, pumps, and heat exchangers, are shared, with only modest changes to cooling-loop sizing and a larger radiator on the truck. The result, they said, is a compressor and thermal stack already proven across millions of miles, delivering “reliability from day one.”
Priestley also highlighted a practical payoff of the indirect design:
“There’s no AC lines, there’s no refrigerant lines…It comes from the factory fully charged, sealed with refrigerant, and it just exchanges coolant. It doesn’t actually run refrigerant up to the front of the vehicle.”
This eliminates potentially leak-prone plumbing that would otherwise require hands-on service, reducing overall uptime and potentially cutting into business margins. The megamanifold runs cabin HVAC and every powertrain heating and cooling loop at once, recapturing waste heat from motors and the battery instead of dumping it the way a diesel engine does.
The approach is just the latest chapter in a continuing story of stretching thermal solutions across wildly different vehicles. Model Y’s Octovalve evolved into the Super Manifold used on Cybertruck, and later Model S/X refreshes. Cybercab then introduced Supermanifold V3, which Tesla says is 80 percent automated to build and 38 percent more efficient than typical automotive thermal systems.
This thermal system is also shared with Cybercab – one thermal system for both our most efficient vehicle & our biggest vehicle
— Tesla Semi (@tesla_semi) September 25, 2026
Tesla has done the same with the 4680 cells, both being utilized in the Cybertruck and Semi, and with heat-pump compressors that Priestley noted were already common across the passenger-car fleet.
Concurrent development of crucial vehicle elements buys scale and reliability that a truck-only thermal system could not match. High-volume passenger car parts are cheaper and more accessible, which can give fleets a sealed, low-maintenance loop of operation from their first day of operation.
For owners and operators, that translates into less energy spent on cabin heat in the colder months, fewer refrigerant-related repairs, and a thermal architecture already stress-tested at passenger-car volumes before the first high-volume Semi left the lines in Nevada.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk certainly tipped off some details of the Tesla Roadster event with a broadening of information regarding the company’s decision to delay the unveiling for two weeks.
For years, people have speculated about what the Roadster will be capable of. While there have been plenty of things said about what it *could* do, we have not seen or been told by Tesla what it will actually be capable of.
However, over the past few days, Tesla’s weather updates have truly pushed the speculation into Plaid Mode, basically all but confirming the car will have some sort of aerial capability — whether that would be hovering or fully flying remains to be seen — but it definitely seems that it will be able to leave the ground intentionally.
“Because this event can only be held outdoors…”
Tesla posted on Monday that it would delay the Roadster event until October 15, and it indicated that it had to do this because the event “can only be held outdoors.”
With the potential SpaceX collaboration to develop cold-gas thrusters that will help the vehicle go airborne, doing this indoors is probably not a safe, or even plausible, possibility.
Roadster event update
We’ve been tracking the weather closely with local meteorologists, but given the severe conditions predicted & because this event can only be held outdoors, we’ve made the difficult decision to reschedule.
New date is October 15. Additional details to…
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 28, 2026
FAA Airspace Restriction
The FAA gave Tesla a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) for 10,000 feet above ground level, much higher than the typical 2,000-foot restrictions that are usually placed at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas site.
Tesla Roadster event requires restricted airspace, and the FAA obliges
Some have said that this massive increase is due to Tesla’s need to restrict unauthorized drone use for spying on the event.
Elon Admits High Winds
“Due to high winds, the new Roadster demo is postponed by 2 weeks,” Musk said in a post on X yesterday.
Due to high winds, the new Roadster demo is postponed by 2 weeks https://t.co/dV3ojDh1iT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 30, 2026
A reply reading, “What’s strong wind got to do with a car demo with four grounded wheels?” was directly below Musk’s post, satirically and sarcastically probing for more details.
All signs are pointing toward an aerial demonstration for the Roadster.
SpaceX set to launch astronauts and a classified Falcon Heavy mission on the same day
Tesla Cybercab and Semi have more in common than you might think
