Officials forecast than 50 launches from Florida's Space Coast this year - Spaceflight Now

Military officials in charge of the Eastern Range at Cape Canaveral project more than 50 launches from Florida’s Space Coast this year, with SpaceX responsible for most of the launch activity, the vice commander of the 45th Space Wing said this week.

The Florida spaceport hosted 31 launches in 2020, including 30 space missions and a high-altitude atmospheric test flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon abort system.

Brande Walton, vice commander of the 45th Space Wing, which oversees launch operations at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and the neighboring Kennedy Space Center.

In fact, the 30 successful launches from Florida last year that sent payloads into orbit, and destinations beyond, set a record. Before 2020, the previous record for launches from the Space Coast that reached orbit was 29, a mark set in 1966.

“It’s shaping to be another remarkable year for launches on the Space Coast, with three human spaceflight missions, two of them on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, and one on Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft,” Walton said.

Other landmark missions launched from Florida in 2020 included Solar Orbiter, a European-built spacecraft that will take the first pictures of the Sun’s poles, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, and the first launch into a polar orbit from Cape Canaveral since the 1960s, Walton said.

Officials from the 45th Space Wing projected 48 launches in 2020 at the beginning of last year, an uptick in missions primarily driven by SpaceX’s Starlink internet network.

Eight of ULA’s up to 10 planned missions this year will launch from Cape Canaveral.

Assuming the 53-launch forecast counts ULA’s eight planned missions from Cape Canaveral and the first SLS test launch, the 45th Space Wing presumably expects SpaceX to perform the remaining 44 flights from Florida’s Space Coast.

At least two Falcon Heavy launches are firmly scheduled this year, each carrying payloads for the Space Force.

Aside from the Vulcan’s first flight, ULA’s Florida launch schedule includes two Atlas 5 launches with unpiloted and crewed test flights of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, an Atlas 5 flight with NASA’s Lucy asteroid exploration probe, and several Atlas 5s for the Space Force.

Fourteen launches from the Space Coast last year carried Starlink satellites into orbit, nearly half of all the launches from Florida in 2020