It was a totally packed 2019 for SpaceX. Indeed, the company launched a whole range of missions for its commercial customers, made impressive progress specifically on its Crew Dragon spacecraft for NASA, and started to launch its Starlink communications satellites, and began launching its Starlink communications satellites, much to many astronomers' irritation everywhere. Like the year that passed, 2020 is promising to be action-filled, too, and SpaceX is not wasting time setting back-to-back launches this year with its first one slated for Jan. 6.
Originally, the mission was supposed to happen last December 30, 2019 but delays obliged SpaceX to push things back a little. In addition, as reported by Teslarati, the drone ship of SpaceX was recently recognized being transported to its desired designation, where it is going to act "as the floating landing pad for the Falcon 9 following its launch. The mission itself, known as Starlink-2, as indicated in brg.com, "will be the 3rd of many planned Starlink launches," delivering a massive 60 of "SpaceX's tiny communication satellites into the Earth Orbit." This is the time SpaceX is launching a load of 60 of its satellites punctually.
Space X's Grand Plan
The grand plans of SpaceX for its Starlink project comprises of dozens of launches each year and thousands of small satellites sent to Earth orbit. Once these tiny satellites have been correctly positioned, they will provide a communications network, not to mention, high-speed information access to parts of the globe that presently lack it. It is going to cost the company billions of dollars to make this happen. However, eventual payoffs can be enormous.
While this may sound great, not everybody is agreeing and happy with it. Several astronomers have expressed strong criticism on this plan of Space X because of its potential effect on Earth-based observations. How a group of Starlink satellites can make observing space complicated may have already been seen. Still, SpaceX has vowed to work with the astronomers to discover how to alleviate its effect.
Space Missions to Watch in this Year
From commercial crew to numerous Mars missions, this year certainly promises to be such an exciting year for spaceflight. Firms and space agencies alike have a lot of exciting missions on deck for 2020, "from returning lunar samples to studying the sun-up close." This was according to space.com. Meanwhile, another task to look forward to Space X is the company's possibility of launching NASA astronauts into space early this year. Meaning, US's "long human-spaceflight drought may not last any longer.
In relation to American astronauts, in an article space.com posted on its site, it stated that these astronauts have had to depend on Russian Royuz spacecraft "to get to and from orbit since July 2011." This was when NASA retired its space shuttle fleet. The said agency wants private U.S. vehicles to stop this reliance and has been inspiring their progress via the Commercial Crew Program. NASA awarded SpaceX in September 2014, $2.6 billion, and $4.2 billion to Boeing to complete their projects on their astronaut taxis. These projects are capsules, also known as Crew Dragon (for SpaceX) and CST-100 Starliner (for Boeing). At the time, officials of NASA expressed how they wanted, at least one of the vehicles mentioned, to be "up and running by the end of 2017."
