Few people believed the rocket launch ecosystem on Florida's Space Coast could accelerate at such record-shattering speed in recent years — with mor

Unprecedented launches: Space Coast poised to break its yearly rocket record before Halloween

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2024-10-21 06:00:02

Few people believed the rocket launch ecosystem on Florida's Space Coast could accelerate at such record-shattering speed in recent years — with more unprecedented launch growth forecast in the upcoming decade, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Director Janet Petro said.

Indeed, KSC and neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station may already tie the all-time annual record of 72 orbital launches on Monday. SpaceX is targeting a Falcon 9 rocket liftoff on a Starlink satellite mission during a 4½-hour launch window from 6:40-11:11 p.m., navigational warnings indicate.

That means the Cape's record-breaking 73rd launch of 2024 will likely happen before Halloween. And November and December remain ahead on the calendar.

"I can tell you, we are busier than we have ever been before. In 2021 — so three years ago — we supported just over 30 launches from the Eastern Range, which was a record at the time," Petro said during an Aug. 23 Space Coast Symposium keynote speech at the Astronauts Memorial Foundation.

For decades, the Cape's longstanding record of 29 orbital launches dated to the experimental Apollo era in 1966. Florida actually hosted 145 total launches that year if including suborbital missions, low-altitude weather rockets, and ship and submarine-launched missiles, Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told FLORIDA TODAY.