By David Shepardson
ARLINGTON, Virginia, May 20 (Reuters) – SpaceX aims to reach 10,000 launches annually within five years, but government officials will need to see improved reliability before approving such an expansion, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said he met with SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who told him about the company’s ambitious goal. SpaceX conducted 170 launches in 2025 deploying about 2,500 satellites.
Bedford said Shotwell told him “about the SpaceX five-year vision to get to 10,000 launches a year.”
In a Forbes video interview that aired this week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk noted the company already has 10,000 satellites in orbit and eventually wants to launch 10,000 communications satellites per year, though he did not specify a timeframe.
Bedford said after a forum that the FAA would need to see greater reliability before approving such a goal.
“We need to see a lot more reliability,” Bedford told reporters after the forum.
The FAA licenses all commercial space launches and takes steps to streamline key hurdles. It imposes restrictions to ensure launches or space accidents do not interfere with passenger air traffic.
Bedford said the purpose of the meeting with SpaceX “was to go through the constraints that we see and what can we do planning wise now to put ourselves in a position to accommodate that type of a stretch goal.”
SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bedford said he and Shotwell “had a very frank conversation, we’re going to have to push ourselves, they’re going to have to push their reliability.”
He noted that President Donald Trump wants to get to the moon before 2028. “To do that, we are going to have to work with industry to unlock that innovation,” Bedford added.
Bedford also said the FAA was not currently the limiting factor for space launches. “I can see a future where we will be the limiting factor, because we are not putting enough funding into our space team,” he said.
He said the FAA was reviewing data from prior launches to better understand risks. To address safety concerns, the FAA has to bar flights in some areas at the time of launch and “that can be very disruptive,” Bedford said.
In January, SpaceX said it wants to launch a constellation of 1 million satellites that will orbit Earth and harness the sun to power AI data centers.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
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