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SpaceX Is Planning At Least Four More Launches This Year

The company will attempt another International Space Station resupply in mid November.

For a company that just had a major mission failure for the first time in its history, SpaceX sure seems gung-ho about its return to orbit.

Earlier this week, Gwynne Shotwell, the company's president, said she wasn't sure when the company would return to flight after its failed International Space Station resupply mission in late June. But Tuesday, Lee Rosen, the company's vice president of mission and launch operations, said the company is planning at least four more launches by the end of the year, an ambitious schedule considering the first of those flights is currently slated for early November.

According to a slide presented by Rosen at the AIAA Spaceflight conference, SpaceX will attempt to land one of its rockets for potential reuse four more times by the end of the year. At least one of those attempts is expected to take place on an overland landing pad as opposed to a drone boat, as SpaceX has tried in the past.

The ISS advisory committee said SpaceX's next ISS resupply mission will take place on or around November 15, which is currently the earliest announced flight. This is a pretty quick turnaround from its June 28 crash, considering that both the Orbital Science's Antares rocket, which crashed nearly a year ago, and Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, which crashed last November, still haven't returned to action.

Cramming in three additional launches by the end of the year is going to be tough—SpaceX had been averaging about one a month before its June 28 failure. The company is notorious for missing its aggressive deadlines, so, if I had to put money on it, I'd expect to see them back at the launch pad maybe once or twice before the year is out.