Rocket Launch Statistics By Country, Launch Vehicle Family, Roscosmos
Updated · Dec 26, 2024
WHAT WE HAVE ON THIS PAGE
- Introduction
- Editor’s Choice
- Rocket Launch Statistics By Country
- Commercial Space Lanuches
- Major Satellite Projects Around The World
- Number Of Carriers Rockets Launched By Roscosmos
- Orbital Launch By Country
- Orbital Launches By Launch Vehicle Family
- Countries With Homegrown Capabilities Of Launching Orbital Rockets
- Growth And Challenges In The Commercial Space Sector
- Conclusion
Introduction
Rocket Launch Statistics: An annual event for the year-long 2024 in the international space industry will be set as it continues to raise new records for the frequency of rocket launches, success rates, and economic impacts. Commercial launching satellites and then heralding space-exploration missions, data was marked to stress the growing role that space technologies are seeing in the future.
The article highlights an in-depth analysis of the most critical rocket launch statistics and trends in business in the year 2024.
Editor’s Choice
- Recent rocket launch statistics state that 568 rockets were launched by private companies by 2023, with 96 by SpaceX and 45 by contracted Chinese contractor CASC, compared to less than 30 by any government agency.
- U.S. companies overall launched 117 commercial rockets in 2023, an unprecedented increase since any year, as prices fell and companies like SpaceX and Rocket Lab went into business.
- By 2021-09, Starlink had more than 6,300 satellites in orbit and hopes to deploy up to 40,000 satellites in total.
- Rocket launch statistics reveal that Kuiper is Amazon’s program to send off more than 3,200 satellites before 2025. In 2021, Roscosmos made 25 launches, nine of which were commercial. The sites of the launch were mostly based in Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome.
- The U.S. led the globe with orbital launches at 136, followed by China, 63, and Russia, 16. Other countries such as Japan, India, and Iran had a large number less than their preceding names.
- Rocket launch statistics show that in 2023, the Falcon-9 was the most frequently used rocket family at 126 launches, and it was followed by various other vehicles like Starship, Firefly-Alpha, and China’s CZ-2,3,4 family.
- New commercial rockets in 2024 will number 14, nearly half of which will come from start-ups, some in Australia and Argentina. Japan’s ambitious space program will seek to double the size of its space market from the current US$27 billion to US$54 billion by the 2030s.
- Signs were emerging of a slowing economy in space from Q4 2023, with few mergers and acquisitions and a 2.9% drop in the S-Network Space Index.
Rocket Launch Statistics By Country
(Source: statista.com)
- Launching rockets into orbit is an incredibly costly endeavor, which historically used to be restricted to government space agencies that sent astronauts and satellites into orbit.
- However, this trend has been changing with the tremendous growth experienced by the private space industry in recent years.
- Increasingly, governments are entrusting their launches to contractors, while private ventures like those of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX are actively pursuing new ventures such as a combination of suborbital and orbital space travel and transportation.
- According to rocket launch statistics, over 180 rockets were launched by private providers in 2023; for SpaceX alone, it did 96 launches, making the company the biggest player in the game. It was followed by the Chinese contractor CASC, which conducted 45 launches.
- In contrast, government space agencies were responsible for only about 30 launches over the same period.
- Of these, Russia’s Roscosmos was the most active, accomplishing 18 of them, placing it third overall. India’s ISRO ranked fifth with just seven launches.
Commercial Space Lanuches
(Reference: statista.com)
- Rocket launch statistics state that in the year 2023, American corporations blasted off into another century, with 117 of them already commissioning their commercial space rockets.
- While the activity by U.S. companies this year marks such a jump launch, it also suggests a vast increase over the decade.
- Such changes take place when most successful companies, such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Rocket Lab, reduce prices to provide more access and frequency in reaching space.
Major Satellite Projects Around The World
(Source: statista.com)
- Rocket launch statistics reveal that Starlink began its operations in 2019, and by the first week of September 2021, it already had more than 6,300 satellites in orbit.
- With plans for more than 12,000 in orbit, the possibility has been stretched to 40,000 in a project extension announcement.
- Another player in the satellite international market is Amazon, with a project called Kuiper, which will have over 3,200 satellites. After successfully launching two prototypes this year, Amazon is set to deploy its commercial satellites by 2025.
- Turkey has announced its own large-scale internet satellite projects.
- In August, state-owned Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technologies announced the launch of the first 18 satellites of its Qianfan constellation, intending to reach over 15,000 satellites by 2030.
- Geespace, a subsidiary of Chinese carmaker Geely, scouted for nearly 6,000 satellites by planning to have 30 satellites in orbit by early September.
- Among the European satellite operators, entirely new to the fixed and mobile broadband game in 2019, was the French satellite operator Eutelsat.
- After acquiring OneWeb, the British low-orbit constellation, which aims to have over 600 active telecom satellites by 2024, Eutelsat now owns the second-largest satellite constellation fleet in the entire world, just behind SpaceX.
- Meanwhile, the European Union is pushing forward with the Iris2 project, a sovereign 300-satellite broadband satellite constellation presented to the European Commission on September 2.
- The rapid proliferation of satellite constellations across nations has raised many serious issues, including a possible increase in collision and debris, as well as light pollution that interferes with astronomical research.
Number Of Carriers Rockets Launched By Roscosmos
(Reference: statista.com)
- Rocket launch statistics indicate that in 2021, Russia’s aerospace corporation Roscosmos conducted 25 rocket launches, among which most were federal missions.
- On commercial launches, they made up nine out of all the above figures. More than half of the rockets were launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Orbital Launch By Country
(Reference: space.skyrocket.de)
- Rocket launch statistics reveal that in the year 2023, the United States backed up its word, firing 136 orbital rocket missions, well ahead of the rest of the world.
- Also continuing to grow its space capabilities was China with 63 launches. Russia, which has completed 16 launches, keeps its significant footprint in this entire industry.
- New Zealand, partnering with the USA and other emerging space countries such as Rocket Lab, completed 13 launches- perhaps an emerging player.
- Others are still small for Japan, four each for India and Iran, 3 for Europe, and a single shot by North Korea.
- All these figures show below the participation of nations in space exploration and deployment of satellites, with the US leading and China right close by.
Orbital Launches By Launch Vehicle Family
(Reference: space.skyrocket.de)
- Recent rocket launch statistics state that currently, different launch vehicle families are being used for orbital launches while actively contributing to space exploration and satellite deployment.
- Falcon-9 tops the list with 126 launches; Starship, however, had 4. Firefly-Alpha is next with one launch, while Vulcan completed 2. China’s CZ-2,3,4 family had 30 launches, and these launches were supplemented by other vehicles such as CZ-5 and CZ-6,7,8, which had 2 and 13 launches, respectively.
- Vehicles with fewer launches include CZ-12, Hyperbola, Kuaizhou-1, and Kuaizhou-11.
- There were about 1 to 4 launches by those Chinese vehicles. Like many more rocket families of other nations, the Russian R-7 with 14 launches, Angara with 2, Delta-,4, and Atlas-5 with 1 and 2, respectively, have their shares of activity.
- The PSLV/GSLV had three launches from India, whereas SSLV accounted for 1. Vega and Ariane-6 saw 2 and 1 launches from Europe, respectively.
- Mikado by Rocket Lab coincided with the CZ-6,7,8 family as both achieved 13 launches.
- Further contributions were the H-2 and H-3 rockets in Japan, which launched 2 and 3 times, respectively, while the DPRK’s Chollima has counted 1 lift-off. Both Iran’s Qaem and Simorgh vehicles achieved two launches apiece.
- Lastly, newer systems such as KAIROS, Lijian-1/Jielong-Yinli-1, and Zhuque-2, each with 1 launch apiece, showcase the new aspects of global launch capabilities.
Countries With Homegrown Capabilities Of Launching Orbital Rockets
(Source: statista.com)
- Just last month, South Korea became one of the very few nations to send up a space rocket through its home-grown technology.
- On June 21, the much-awaited Nuri rocket, or Korea Space Launch Vehicle-II, zoomed off from Goheung, southern South Korea, with a mix of smaller satellites on board and a dummy payload weighing 1.3 tons, proving its capability for launching satellites over 1 ton.
- As for the Korea Herald, only seven nations globally have been able to achieve this technological progress.
- Yet, according to rocket launch statistics, there is a historical record of 13 countries and the European Space Agency (ESA) within that number of countries that developed rockets capable of launching into space.
- However, only 11 of the programs currently remain active, including the Russian and Ukrainian programs, which are offshoots of the earlier Soviet space program, which pioneered the launching of a rocket into Earth’s orbit.
- Active but no longer productive European programs in the UK and France have now merged under the ESA program since its commencement in 1979.
- Asia boasts some of the oldest and still active space programs, including China and Japan, which were established in 1970, and India, which joined the ranks in 1980.
- Today, South Korea is finding itself among countries that aspire to “re” set foot on the Moon – the likes of the USA, Russia, India, Japan, China, the UAE, and Turkey.
Growth And Challenges In The Commercial Space Sector
- As interest in commercial space development boosts the demand for new launch vehicles, fourteen new rockets are expected to make their maiden flights in 2024.
- Some of these new launch vehicles are from such industrial behemoths as United Launch Alliance and Arianespace, while the great majority are from a growing number of smaller companies, including those developing Australia and Argentina’s first orbital launchers.
- According to rocket launch statistics, the fourth quarter of 2023 highlighted Japan’s ambitious push into space. This exciting opportunity is enhanced by an increase in government budgets and investments from the industry into the public and private sectors, both promising to deliver exciting returns.
- With this funding, Japan targets doubling its domestic space market from about US$27 billion to US$54 billion by the early 2030s.
- Yet, there is also a question of how to keep Japan from losing independent access to space through recent launch vehicle failures and delays. Although records will be broken in 2023, some signs point to a slight slowdown in the space economy.
- As per rocket launch statistics about mergers and acquisitions in space industry activities, these slowed down in Q4 of 2023.
- The S-Network Space Index,x tracking a global portfolio of publicly traded space companies, underperformed all other benchmark indices over the year and declined by 2.9%.
- However, it was in the fourth quarter that equity financing deals intensified, thereby giving crucial support to capital-intensive startup companies in the space industry.
- Q4 also reports on workforce and technology trends, including the growing number of university satellite programs.
- More schools around the world are giving students opportunities to participate in satellite projects.
- Most of these programs have education as a primary purpose, while some research is tremendous because, for some countries, university satellites are all that they have in terms of space activity.
Conclusion
2024 is a year of rocket launch statistics, and it is a launchpad for resounding transformations in space explorations and commercialization. Its record numbers and groundbreaking achievements are being noted to pave the way for a new era for humankind. From economic expansion to technological development, the sky is no longer the limit—it’s just the beginning.
Sources
FAQ.
The private sector has launched rockets at a rate more than ever, with SpaceX at the forefront among them. Private providers launched more than 180 rockets in 2023, while SpaceX sponsored 96 of them. They innovate and lower the costs of launching into orbits so that space travels occur frequently and affordably.
The highest number of orbital launches in 2023 was by the U.S. at 136, followed by China at 63, and then Russia with a measly 16 missions. Other contributions were from several countries, such as Japan and India, and it was also noticeable for a country with only 13 launches, New Zealand.
Major satellite constellations are such as Starlink by SpaceX, with over 6300 satellites in orbit; Kuiper by Amazon, with 3200 satellites lined up to be launched by 2025; and even the constellation satellites by Turkey or China that are at advanced stages now.
The accession of more launchers, fourteen in total, mainly from many new entrants such as Australia and Argentina, would further extend the horizons of the commercial space sector by 2024. It follows increased investment and technological changes in the sector.
This is being expanded, but nevertheless, certain problems haunt this industry, such as delays in launch, technical failures, and recession. Further, as Japan tends to double its space market by the 2030s, it has quite an obstacle in achieving independent access to space.
Joseph D'Souza founded Sci-Tech Today as a personal passion project to share statistics, expert analysis, product reviews, and experiences with tech gadgets. Over time, it evolved into a full-scale tech blog specializing in core science and technology. Founded in 2004 by Joseph D’Souza, Sci-Tech Today has become a leading voice in the realms of science and technology. This platform is dedicated to delivering in-depth, well-researched statistics, facts, charts, and graphs that industry experts rigorously verify. The aim is to illuminate the complexities of technological innovations and scientific discoveries through clear and comprehensive information.
