2017 Space Launch Statistics

Orbital Launch Activity 2017 - Summary

Taking the lead on its own for the first time since 2003, the United States conducted 29 orbital space launches from its own territory using six different launch vehicle families from three operators.

2017 was a record-shattering year for SpaceX, successfully completing 18 Falcon 9 missions and surpassing the company's previous best of eight launches in a calendar year. SpaceX's 2017 portfolio ranged from orbital logistics via the company's Dragon spacecraft, high-energy Geotransfer missions for telecommunications operators, classified and semi-classified launches for the U.S. government, missions in support of the largest satellite constellation upgrade performed to date, and an international flight in support of Earth's observation.

Responsible for 20% of all launches in 2017, SpaceX achieved its major goal of having a failure-free year to allow the company to demonstrate it can fly missions at a speedy pace with a rapid-fire campaign in the first half of the year that saw the company get six missions off the ground in nine weeks.

The California-based launch provider also made strides in the re-use department - completing 14 successful first stage recoveries at 100% success rate and flying five missions with 'flight-proven' - or previously used - boosters to take its re-use ambitions one major step closer to becoming routine. SpaceX also made progress in its fairing recovery endeavors with expectations of achieving intact fairing returns on a regular basis in 2018.

The company's 2017 manifest was dominated by Low Earth Orbit missions as Falcon 9 rockets flew four times with Dragon cargo vehicles and performed four flights in support of the Iridium-NEXT communications constellation upgrade, delivering a total of 40 satellites to orbit. Falcon's LEO business in 2017 also included two classified missions, lifting the mysterious NROL-76 satellite in May and the fifth mission of the X-37B winged spaceplane in September. SpaceX flew two Geotransfer missions for satellite operator SES, both using flight-proven vehicles, and one mission each for EchoStar, Inmarsat, BulgariaSat, Intelsat and KoreaSat.

United Launch Alliance as the other large U.S. launch provider and primary SpaceX competitor, had a slower year - performing eight orbital launches in 2017: three for the United States National Reconnaissance Office, two for the U.S. Air Force, two for NASA and one for Orbital ATK.

Atlas V flew successfully six times in 2017, lifting the classified NROL-79, NROL-42 and NROL-52, the third SBIRS missile early warning satellite, NASA's TDRS-M Tracking and Data Relay Satellite and Orbital ATK's SS John Glenn, the company's seventh operational Cygnus spacecraft heading to the International Space Station. Delta IV flew only once, carrying the Wideband Global Satcom 9 satellite and Delta II completed its penultimate mission when lifting the JPSS-1 weather satellite for NASA and NOAA.

Flying six time in its 401 configuration and once in the larger 421 and 541 versions with boosters, Atlas V kept up its impeccable safety record while the single-stick Delta IV is slowly working toward retirement, with three more missions in 2018 and Delta II looking at the same fate with one final flight set for September 2018.

Orbital ATK conducted three launches in 2017 from three different U.S. space ports. The company kicked 2017 off with an Atlas V launch of the Cygnus OA-7 spacecraft as the third and final Cygnus launch planned to be outsourced to ULA in an effort to keep the company's obligations to the ISS program while working through the process of getting the re-engined Antares rocket into regular operations.

In August, a custom version of the company's Minotaur IV rocket - sporting an additional Orion 38 as fifth stage lifted off from SLC-46 at Cape Canaveral with the SensorSat space situational awareness spacecraft of the U.S. Air Force and three government-operated CubeSats - targeting a unique equatorial orbit from where SensorSat stares straight up to gather tracking data on objects in Geostationary Orbit. Minotaur-C - a commercial spin-off without government-furnished parts - launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in October to lift six SkySat high-resolution imaging satellites and four medium-resolution Dove CubeSats into orbit for Planet Labs.

Antares flew for the second time in its 200 series in November, lifting the Cygnus "SS Gene Cernan" into orbit for a resupply mission to the International Space Station.

Russia operated 21 orbital launches in 2017, twenty of which managed to reach orbit as the country was not quite able to manage a perfect year which was last the case in 2003. The country's Soyuz workhorse launched 15 times in 2017, Proton had a slow year of re-building with four missions, Rockot flew once as it approaches its retirement and a rare Russian-Ukrainian collaboration was shown with a single Zenit launch toward the end of the year.

Soyuz, losing its status as the world's most-flown rocket in 2017, checked off four crewed flights to the International Space Station and continued to serve the Station's cargo needs via three Progress launches - two handled by the upgraded Soyuz 2-1A vehicle and one by the venerable Soyuz U. Blasting off from Baikonur in February, Soyuz U capped a record-setting career of 43 years and 786 launches - holding the record for the most-flown and longest serving launch system as well as the best mark for most missions carried out in a calendar year - flying 47 times in 1979.

Russia's non-ISS Soyuz missions, all handled by the upgraded Soyuz 2 fleet, include five 2-1B, two 2-1A and one 2-1v - four from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome with a Tundra missile warning satellite, a Glonass navigation craft, Kosmos-2519 & company, and a Lotos signals intelligence satellite, one from the Baikonur Cosmodrome with 73 satellites and one from the new Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's far east.

Two Soyuz missions were performed by Arianespace from the Guiana Space Center, lifting the Hispasat 36W-1 and SES 15 communications satellites into Geostationary Transfer Orbit.

Russia's only failure of 2017 came on the Soyuz mission out of Vostochny that carried the Meteor-M 2-1 weather satellite and 18 international secondary payloads. The mission fell short of orbit because of a previously undetected software bug in the guidance system of the Fregat upper stage that can only manifest itself for polar-orbit launches out of Vostochny due to the launch pad's unique geographical orientation among all the Soyuz sites across the globe.

Another possible in-flight incident occurred on the 73-satellite mission out of Baikonur that left an unusually large number of satellites dead-on-arrival or severely degraded due to a suspected anomaly creating conditions for a subset of the payloads that even space-rated electronics could not withstand.

Proton - the major trouble-maker in recent years - had a slow year in 2017, coming back in June after break of one full year following a close call in 2016 that exposed a systemic engine problem affecting Proton and Soyuz and required Proton's powerplants to undergo fairly extensive refurbishment. The launcher's 2017 missions were comprised of a single flight in the interests of the Russian Ministry of Defence, deploying the Blagovest communications satellite, and three commercial flights handled by International Launch Services to deliver the EchoStar 21, Amazonas 5 and AsiaSat 9 communications satellites.

Rockot, approaching the conclusion of a career of nearly three decades, flew once in 2017 and lifted into orbit the Sentinel-5p mission for the European Commission's Copernicus program. The Russian-Ukrainian Zenit rocket - a victim of political conflicts between the two countries - flew once in 2017 in what is hoped to be the launcher's resurrection as cautious optimism emerged over the last year with tentative decisions on both sides to keep Zenit alive.

China had another busy year - performing sixteen launches with its Long March rocket fleet and adding two new vehicles that could become contenders on the commercial launch market via very low prices. Both Kuaizhou-1A and Kaituozhe-2 are all-solid launch vehicles capable of light-to-medium lift missions that may be of interest to LEO operators, particularly in the field of remote sensing.

China's heritage fleet, Long March-2, 3 and 4 handled 13 of the country's launches - supporting a range of missions in the civilian and military sectors. One of the focus points for China was the deployment of the initial Yagoan-30 constellation, requiring three Long March 2C launches to send nine satellites into three different orbital planes in what is suspected to be an electronic-intelligence collection system. Another apparent reconnaissance project, LKW, flying under the cover of a land surveying mission, launched two satellites in 2017.

The lone scientific mission orbited by the Chinese is the Hard X-Ray Modulation Telescope, studying the high-energy X-ray universe at unprecedented resolution.

Long March 3B, China's well-proven heavy-lifter, experienced one partial failure - dropping the Zhongxing-9A communications satellite off in a lower-than-planned orbit due to an attitude control malfunction during its second burn, costing the satellite around ten years worth of operational life to make up for the shortfall. CZ-3B's other missions in 2017 went off without trouble, lifting three communications satellites to Geostationary Orbit and expanding China's Beidou navigation system via a two-satellite launch.

The country's new line of rockets, Long March 5, 6, 7 each flew once, marking the second flight for each of the new family members. The light-lifter, Long March 6, sent a trio of commercial imaging satellites into orbit while its bigger cousin, Long March 7, is partly responsible for China's biggest space success of 2017: the Tianzhou-1 cargo flight demonstration. Spending five months in orbit, TZ-1 completed three dockings with the Tiangong-2 laboratory module, demonstrated China's ability to complete in-orbit refueling and testing a fast rendezvous scheme as the last critical techniques needed for the operation of the country's large modular space station, starting deployment before the end of the decade.

Long March 5, China's new heavy-lift vehicle, suffered a major setback when it failed to reach orbit on its second test flight that was hoped to clear the vehicle for high-profile missions like the Chang'e 5 lunar sample return and the TianHe space station core module. Lifting off from Hainan Island in July, Long March 5 lost one of its two YF-77 main engines a little over five minutes into the flight and the loss of performance could not be made up, causing the vehicle to re-enter the atmosphere during the second stage's attempts to save the mission.

The cause of the turbopump-related failure has been pin-pointed and corrective measures are being implemented on the YF-77 engine as China pushes toward another test flight around mid-year 2018 to get back on track toward deployment of the Chinese Space Station CSS and the eagerly awaited Chang'e two-way trip to the Moon.

Europe's launch vehicles, the Ariane 5 workhorse and Vega light-lift vehicle, have continued to show a constant flight rate, equaling their 2016 record of nine missions, all successful. Ariane 5 flew six times in 2017, completing five missions in its ECA configuration and lifting pairs of heavy communications satellites into Geostationary Orbit which has become the bread and butter business for the European heavy-lifter. The remaining mission employed the ES version of Ariane 5 for the launcher's second flight backing the Galileo navigation satellite system, sending GalileoSat 19 through 22 into orbit to bring the constellation one step closer to fully operational capabilities.

Vega's 2017 missions were all in support of Earth observation, though with different objectives - sending the Sentinel-2B satellite into orbit for Copernicus, conducting a dual-launch of the technology demonstration and Earth-imaging VENµS and the OPTSAT-3000 reconnaissance satellite, and delivering the Mohammed VI-A satellite to give Morocco a space-based imaging platform for its national interests.

Japan's H-IIA rocket had a record-setting year, surpassing its previous benchmark of four missions by two flights. The rocket's 2017 manifest was dominated by the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System that received three new additions to establish the initial operational stage of four satellites in high orbits to enhance the availability of GPS navigation services in Japan's urban canyons and improve its accuracy for precise application in aviation and mapping. H-IIA also lifted the country's DSN-2 military communications satellite, a radar satellite for the Information Gathering Satellite System and the GCOM-C climate observatory.

To start the year, Japan attempted to launch the world's smallest orbital launch vehicle in a demonstration flight for potential future developments as a launch capability for single CubeSats has been deemed desirable by the commercial satellite market. However, the SS-520-4 sounding-rocket-turned-space-launcher failed after 20.4 seconds due to a relatively mundane design flaw. JAXA did commit to a re-flight mission and is on track to completing the flight around one year after the rocket's first attempt at reaching orbit.

For India, success and failure were close neighbors in 2017. As the country came off a record-setting year in 2016 with seven missions, it hoped to keep up the pace and equal this record and also set new milestones in the business of small satellite rideshares.

India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle set a new record in February when creating literal bumper-to-bumper traffic in orbit - deploying a total of 104 satellites to set a new record for the most satellites launched by a single vehicle, a stark improvement over the previous record of 37 satellites delivered by a Dnepr rocket in 2014. On its second mission of the year, PSLV delivered the CartoSat-2E imaging satellite and 30 secondary payloads while the third flight lined up for 2017 was targeting a Geotransfer orbit with the IRNSS-1H replacement satellite for India's Regional Navigation Satellite System. That mission marked the end of a 20-year success streak for the PSLV rocket, failing to separate its payload fairing due to a faulty rubber bellows - essentially trapping the satellite in the closed fairing.

India's other rocket family, the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, flew twice in 2017 - the GSLV Mk.II launcher extended its success record when delivering the GSAT-9 South Asia communications satellite and the more powerful GSLV Mk.III checked off its first orbital test flight with GSAT-19 after an earlier sub-orbital demonstration flight.

Rounding out the world's 2017 launch manifest was Rocket Lab's Electron - blasting off from New Zealand in May on its first test flight. Although the mission fell short of orbit due to a misconfigured ground telemetry device, Electron managed to impress by demonstrating all critical flight events including stage separation and fairing jettisoning as well as the operation of its electric-pump-fed Rutherford engines. Electron is a special case for space statisticians: although built and operated by a New Zealand-based subsidiary, the parent company resides in the United States and Electron flies under U.S. flag & FAA regulation. Some may therefore count Electron to the U.S. total while others attribute Electron missions to New Zealand.