The head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Wednesday that SpaceX aims to achieve 10,000 launches per year within five years, but government officials need to see its reliability improve before approving such expansion plans. FAA Administrator Brian Bedford said he has met with SpaceX President Gwen Shotwell, who briefed him on the company's ambitious goals. SpaceX conducted 170 launches in 2025 and deployed approximately 2,500 satellites.

Bedford said Shotwell briefed him on "SpaceX's vision to achieve 10,000 launches per year within five years."

In a video interview aired this week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk noted that the company already has 10,000 satellites in orbit and eventually hopes to launch 10,000 communications satellites per year, but he did not specify a specific timetable.

Bedford said after the forum that the FAA would need to see greater reliability before approving the goal.

"We need to see more reliability," Bedford told reporters after the forum.

The Federal Aviation Administration approves all commercial space launches and has taken steps to streamline key approval processes. The agency imposes restrictions to ensure that launch activities or space accidents do not interfere with civil air traffic.

Bedford said the purpose of the meeting with SpaceX was "to sort out the constraints we are seeing and explore what steps can be taken at this stage at the planning level to be ready to achieve this lofty goal."

Bedford said he and Shotwell "had a very honest conversation about how we've got to push ourselves and they've got to push reliability."

He pointed out that Trump hopes to return to the moon by 2028. “To do this, we must work with industry to unlock the potential for innovation,” Bedford added.

Bedford also said that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is not currently a constraint on space launches. "But I foresee that in the future we may be a constraint because we haven't invested nearly enough in our space team," he said.

He said the FAA is reviewing data from past launches to better assess risks. To address safety concerns, the FAA must ban certain areas from flight during launches, "which could cause a lot of disruption," Bedford said.

In January this year, SpaceX announced plans to launch a constellation of 1 million satellites that will orbit the Earth and use solar energy to power artificial intelligence data centers.