SpaceX Proposal Would More Than Double Falcon 9 Launches at Cape Canaveral

The FAA on Friday released a draft environmental assessment (EA) analyzing the company’s proposal to more than double the number of Falcon 9 launches from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, from 50 to 120. To facilitate the increased cadence, SpaceX proposes building a new Falcon 9 landing zone (LZ) at SLC-40 to return the two-stage rocket’s reusable first stage.

Falcon 9 towers about 230 feet, produces more than 1.7 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, and has a success rate above 99 percent across more than 450 missions since 2010. During the 2024 calendar year, SpaceX launched it 132 times, breaking its own single-year global launch record in a banner year for orbital activity. Of the 261 orbital launch attempts last year, Falcon 9 accounted for just over half. The rocket is used by a variety of private and government customers and is responsible for flying NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

But SpaceX is aiming higher. On Monday, Stephanie Bednarek, the firm’s vice president of commercial launch and crew sales, projected it would launch 170 times in 2025, SpaceNews reported. That’s about 14 times per month.

Cape Canaveral is essential to those aims. According to FAA commercial space data, 59 of the 132 Falcon 9 missions that flew in 2024—about 45 percent—lifted off from SLC-40. Many of the first-stage boosters that launch from the site land at LZ-1 and LZ-1, a pair of SpaceX-operated pads built on the site of former Launch Complex 13.

But according to the draft EA, Space Launch Delta 45, which oversees all East Coast space launch operations, does not plan to renew SpaceX’s license to land at LZ-1 and LZ-2 when it expires in July. After a recent rule change, it also now mandates that landings must occur at the launch site. So, SpaceX proposes to build and operate a new LZ directly adjacent to SLC-40. The company has already applied for a real property agreement, which would allow construction to begin, from the Department of the Air Force (DAF).

The draft EA gauges the environmental impact from increasing the number of Falcon 9 launches at SLC-40 from 50 to 120 and any related airspace closures, as well as constructing the new LZ. It accounts for 34 annual first-stage landings, with the rest occurring downrange or on a floating droneship.

Simultaneously, NASA is evaluating a proposed Falcon 9 LZ at Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A, one of SpaceX’s two other government-owned launch sites. The company is seeking 36 launches and 20 landings annually at Kennedy, and a draft EA is expected early this year.

SpaceX is also looking to ramp up Falcon 9 launches at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. In December, the DAF released a notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) around the redevelopment of Vandenberg’s Space Launch Complex 6, which would double Falcon 9’s cadence from 50 to 100 launches per year.

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