After several years of slow-paced launches, SpaceX is ready for a surge in the number of geosynchronous communications satellite launches.
Looking at historical data, orders for large geosynchronous satellites fell sharply globally in the late ’10s, especially in the West, and especially in the years 2019 and early ’20s, when geosynchronous satellite launches suddenly became much rarer.
This downturn in global business was evident for SpaceX, as the Falcon 9 rocket’s most common mission from 2014 to 2018 was geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) launches.
In those five years, SpaceX completed 28 GTO launches for its commercial customers, peaking in 2018 (nine commercial GTO launches in one year).
Then, orders for such satellites ran out and the GTO launch program fell off a cliff, SpaceX completed only 11 GTO launches in the four years from November 2018 to October 2022, and even that figure didn’t start to pick up until two months into late 2022 (five for two months, seven for the year).
For now, however, it looks like SpaceX’s high Earth orbit launch missions will continue to see a resurgence in 2023.
From SpaceX’s announced plans, they will launch at least 11 commercial GTO or GEO orbiting satellites in 2023. This also includes Space Norway’s Arctic Broadband Satellite Mission satellite. According to the report, the satellite will fly to an exotic high Earth orbit (GEO) instead of GTO.
In fact, SpaceX plans to launch more than a dozen GEO / HEO satellites this year. For example, last month the company launched the U.S. military’s USSF-67 directly into geosynchronous orbit on a Heavy Falcon rocket and will follow up with another Heavy Falcon rocket to launch USSF-52 into GEO this year.
Even if some of the missions are postponed until 2024, 2023 will be the year that SpaceX launches the most geosynchronous satellites ever. Unofficially, SpaceX plans to launch 10 more GTOs in 2024, 2025 and beyond.
