no less than 180 missiles successfully launched

SpaceX sent one of its Falcon rockets into orbit every six days on average last year. The total of 61 successful launches equals a record set in 1980 for Soviet R-7 missiles.

Most SpaceX launches carried a commercial payload, including Starlink’s own network of communications satellites. There are now over 3,300 operational Starlinks, by far the largest constellation of satellites ever made. Due to growing space clutter, SpaceX had to move its Starlinks more than 26,000 times between late 2020 and late 2022 to avoid collisions with other objects in space.

In addition to SpaceX, other U.S. companies will have 17 combined launches by 2022, according to analysis by the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts, which maintains spaceflight databases.

Those 17 included the November launch of NASA’s new heavy rocket, the Space Launch System, which will take astronauts to the Moon for years to come.

Europe is retreating

The United States is therefore marked in first place in the ranking. China follows with 62 successful launches, 9 more than in 2021. Many of these were government launches, but a rapidly growing share belongs to commercial missile suppliers. Overall, China’s launch rate in 2022 was almost three times that of Russia.

The total number of European launches has dropped from 15 successful launches in 2021 to just 5 last year. And it has a political explanation: the European Space Agency stopped launching Russian-made Soyuz rockets after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

New Zealand

A notable country in the list is New Zealand, with a record nine launches. It’s not because Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern turned on the money tap for spaceflight, but because the US company Rocket Lab is sending commercial payloads into orbit from New Zealand.

The coming year could break more records than the previous one. SpaceX has said it hopes to launch 100 times by 2023 – missions include the first orbital flight of its massive Starship vehicle, which is intended to eventually take humans to the Moon and Mars.