Premier, Multi-User Spaceport Sets Record for Launches During 2023

By Bob Granath

During the past year, 72 rockets launched into the skies regularly rumbling windows along Florida’s Space Coast proving, again, that NASA’s Kennedy Space Center with Cape Canaveral Space Force Station have been established as the world’s premier multi-user spaceport. This was especially true on the evening of Dec. 28, 2023, when SpaceX launched a Falcon Heavy from Kennedy and followed just three hours later with a Falcon 9 lifting off from the Cape. The new record shattered the previous number set only last year during which 57 rockets lifted off. It is another example of the success of efforts by Kennedy’s Center Director, Janet Petro, and her predecessor, Bob Cabana, who is retiring as NASA’s associate administrator at year’s end.

As the Space Shuttle Program was nearing its conclusion, Cabana and Petro worked to include an increasing number of corporate partners operating at the previously government-only space center. Three companies now are processing human-rated spacecraft at Kennedy.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson recently spoke about the agency’s achievements during the past 12 months.

“This year, NASA continued to make the impossible, possible while sharing our story of discovery with the world,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “We’ve launched missions that are helping tell the oldest stories of our solar system; continued to safely transport astronauts to the International Space Station to conduct groundbreaking science (and) our Earth satellites are providing critical climate data.”

Founded in 2002, SpaceX led the way launching 68 rockets from Florida’s Space Coast this year. This included 13 from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy and 55 from Space Launch Complex-40 at the Cape.

SpaceX is regularly sending crews to the International Space Station aboard their Crew Dragon spacecraft. Soon, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner will join that effort. The company is preparing for the short-duration Crew Flight Test of the spacecraft no earlier than April. At the same time, Lockheed Martin is building and processing the Orion spacecraft that will send the first Artemis astronauts to the Moon next November.

SpaceX missions during 2023 included Crew-6 with NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, joined by Sultan Alneyadi of the United Arab Emirates and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev of Russia. They lifted off aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft on March 2, 2023 for long-term stays aboard the International Space Station. Five months later, Crew-7 launched on Aug. 26, 2023 with NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen of Denmark, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Satoshi Furukawa and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov of Russia.

More companies and newer rockets are on the way. Innovative rockets will provide customers with a broader range of options when choosing how to get their payloads into space.

On March 22, 2023, Relativity Space launched its first rocket, the Terran 1. The new launch vehicle is the first three-dimensional, or 3D, printed rocket. The process is the action or practice of creating a physical object from a three-dimensional digital model by means of a 3D printer.

According to the Relativity Space website, “With an ever-growing need for space infrastructure, demand for launch services is continuously outpacing supply. Our 3D printed reusable rockets can meet this demand, offering customers the right size payload capacity at the right cost.”

At 110 feet tall and 7.5 feet wide, Terran 1 was the largest-ever 3D printed object. It lifted off from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 16, successfully reaching space verifying that 3D printed rockets are structurally viable. However, the rocket did not achieve orbit due to a failure of the second stage. The company retired that version of the rocket in moving on to a larger, reusable Terran R vehicle.

Since 2005, Lockheed Martin and Boeing have operated United Launch Alliance (ULA), a launch service provider operating a number of rockets to place spacecraft into Earth orbit and other destinations in the solar system. The company’s Delta and Atlas rockets are being retired after decades of being staples among American launch vehicles. Early in 2024, the ULA Vulcan Centaur is scheduled for its maiden flight as a two-stage, heavy-lift rocket.

The ULA Vulcan rocket will launch its first certification mission, the Cert-1 flight test, from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral with the Peregrine Lunar Lander. The Vulcan rocket is 202 feet tall and 18 feet in diameter and can have as many as six strap-on solid rocket boosters. It will have 1.1 million pounds of thrust.

Astrobotic’s Peregrine Lunar Lander is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative to deliver science and technology to the lunar surface. Peregrine is designed to land on the Moon’s Sinus Viscositatis (Bay of Stickiness) region. The lander will include 20 instruments, including five for NASA and 15 from other organizations around the world.

With Peregrine Scientists plan to study the lunar exosphere, thermal properties and hydrogen abundance of the lunar regolith, magnetic fields and the radiation environment. It will also test advanced solar arrays. Additionally, the spacecraft’s robotic science investigators plan to remotely search for evidence of water and other resources, and support long-term, sustainable human exploration in advance of NASA’s Artemis Program to return humans to the Moon.

In late summer 2024, Blue Origin plans to launch its first New Glenn rocket, a heavy-lift launch vehicle that has been in development since 2012. Named for legendary NASA astronaut John Glenn, it will be a large two-stage rocket standing 322 feet tall, 23 feet in diameter and generating 3,850,000 pounds of thrust.

Since 2021, Blue Origin has been launching “tourists” into space aboard their New Shepard rocket named for Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American in space. Like his sub-orbital flight in 1961, the New Shepard has taken as many as six paying customers or guests on similar flights into space lifting off and landing near their launch site close to Van Horn, Texas.

The first New Glenn rocket is slated to send NASA’s twin EscaPADE spacecrafts to Mars. EscaPADE for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers is a project of the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. The two 198-pound spacecraft are designed to sturdy the atmosphere of the Red Planet.

“We’re growing our commercial and international partnerships as we venture back to the Moon and on to Mars,” Nelson said and had high praise for those making it happen. “NASA is home to the world’s finest workforce, and there is no limit to what we can achieve when we work together.”

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