Rocket Report: A new super-heavy launch site in California; 2025 year in review
Welcome to Edition 8.24 of the Rocket Report! We're back from a restorative holiday, and there's a great deal Eric and I look forward to covering in 2026. You can get a taste of what we're expecting this year in this feature. Other storylines are also worth watching this year that didn't make the Top 20. Will SpaceX's Starship begin launching Starlink satellites? Will United Launch Alliance finally get its Vulcan rocket flying at a higher cadence? Will Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket be certified by the US Space Force? I'm looking forward to learning the answers to these questions, and more. As for what has already happened in 2026, it has been a slow start on the world's launch pads, with only a pair of SpaceX missions completed in the first week of the year. Only? Two launches in one week by any company would have been remarkable just a few years ago.
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New launch records set in 2025. The number of orbital launch attempts worldwide last year surpassed the record 2024 flight rate by 25 percent, with SpaceX and China accounting for the bulk of the launch activity, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Including near-orbital flight tests of SpaceX’s Starship-Super Heavy launch system, the number of orbital launch attempts worldwide reached 329 last year, an annual analysis of global launch and satellite activity by Jonathan’s Space Report shows. Of those 329 attempts, 321 reached orbit or marginal orbits. In addition to five Starship-Super Heavy launches, SpaceX launched 165 Falcon 9 rockets in 2025, surpassing its 2024 record of 134 Falcon 9 and two Falcon Heavy flights. No Falcon Heavy rockets flew in 2025. US providers, including Rocket Lab Electron orbital flights from its New Zealand spaceport, added another 30 orbital launches to the 2025 tally, solidifying the US as the world leader in space launch.