SpaceX is looking to match its record for most of the year's launches on Thursday

In 2017, SpaceX finally responded to the company's criticism, claiming that it had not kept the promise of a high flight rate for its low-cost launch program.

Before last year, critics were not wrong: SpaceX had never successfully launched more than eight rockets in a given year. Finally, in 2017, he tried 18 launches and all managed to sneak into space. The SpaceX steamroller had arrived.

This year, the company has had a lot of work to do. He flew the big Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time in February. He presented a brand new variant of the potentially highly reusable Falcon 9 rocket in May. And throughout the year, the company's engineers struggled to finalize the development of the Dragon spacecraft to meet NASA's needs in transporting its astronauts to the International Space Station.

Despite this, the company has maintained a steady pace of launch and the company will attempt Thursday its 18th mission this year from Launch Complex-39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch window of Thursday's Es'hail-2 satellite mission opens at 15:46 ET (20:46 UTC) and until 17:29 ET (22:29 UTC). Weather conditions are favorable at 60% and there is an emergency launch window for Friday afternoon.

The Es'hail-2 satellite will provide telecommunication services for the Middle East and North Africa regions, as well as the first geostationary communication capability for radio amateurs. The three-ton satellite will be delivered in a geostationary transfer orbit.

The first step of this Falcon 9 rocket, a variant of the Block 5 thruster, took place on July 22nd for the launch of the Telstar 19V mission. The company will attempt to land on the first stage of the drone "Of course, I still love you" which will be located off the coast in the Atlantic Ocean. This landing will take place approximately eight minutes after take-off, and the satellite is expected to deploy to its transfer orbit a little over 32 minutes after the start of the flight.

After this mission, the end of the year of SpaceX is full and there are four flights before the end of December. Its next flight could take place on Monday, with the launch of dozens of small satellites for the SSO-A mission, including two CubeSats for Kazakhstan.

The webcast below should begin approximately 15 minutes before the launch window opens Thursday.

Launch of the satellite Es'hail-2. / Ars_video]