U.S. leading suppliers flew 44 missions in 2020 aimed at placing payloads in the earth or in deep space, with 40 successes. China followed with 35 successful orbits in 39 launch attempts.
The Russian space program was in third place with 17 successful launches of Russian-built rockets in so many attempts, including two Soyuz missions of European spaceflight in French Guiana. Launchers built by Europe have come around the track four times in five attempts, and Japanese vehicles have launched four times, all successfully.
India’s space program, which has been based on the coronavirus pandemic for most of the year, has launched two successful orbital missions in so many attempts. Iran has made two orbital launch attempts, with one success, and Israel has launched a single mission to deliver a military espionage satellite into orbit.
The most advanced type of space launchers in 2020 were Falcon 9 and the Russian Soyuz of SpaceX. Chinese long-market rockets have flown 34 times – more than Falcon 9s or Soyuz rockets – but come in a variety of configurations, making it difficult to classify into one family.
The final score for orbital launches worldwide in 2020 ends in 114 attempts on 104 successful flights. The ten launch failures were more than global launch providers suffered in a single year in 1971.
Despite the global pandemic, the 114 launch efforts last year 2018 coupled with the most orbital launches since 1990, when military budgets from the Cold War helped drive more missions into orbit.
In 2019, there were 102 orbital launch efforts around the world, with 97 missions successfully reaching the Earth orbit.
In 2020, SpaceX led all launch companies with 25 revolution sessions that sent hundreds of satellites to the company’s Starlink Internet network, the first two astronaut flights on SpaceX’s spaceship Crew Dragon, two space station missions and three launches delivering national security payloads. in a lane for the U.S. government.
All 25 orbits used Falcon 9 rockets, with 20 launches powered by reused Falcon 9 boosters, shown only by SpaceX. One first phase in SpaceX’s fleet flew five times in 2020, the same number of missions carried out last year by the United Launch Alliance’s consumable Atlas 5 rockets or all European rockets.
ULA, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, completed six missions last year. Five flights with ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket orbited national security cargoes, launched the European-built Solar Orbiter science mission and sent NASA’s Perseverance Rover to Mars.
A single Delta 4 Heavy launch in December unveiled a top-secret espionage satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office.
Rocket Lab, builder of the light-class Electron rocket family, completed seven missions last year, with one failure. The company is headquartered in Long Beach, California, and builds engines and other components in the United States, but sets up and sets up its rockets in New Zealand.
Electron rockets are starting to fly from a new launch site in Virginia this year. Due to Rocket Lab’s US headquarters, its launch statistics are listed under the US Companies column.
Northrop Grumman made three launches from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia last year, including two cargo launches to the International Space Station using Antares rockets and a single flight of a solid Minotaur 4 rocket with satellites for the NGO.
Two newcomers to the US small satellite launch business made their first launch efforts in 2020.
Virgin Orbit, founded by billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson, carried out the first test flight of its LauncherOne rocket launched by air off the coast of Southern California in May. Astra, another startup for smallsat, has launched two of its rocket classes on test flights from Alaska.
The Virgin Orbit and Astra test flights all faltered before getting around the orbit, but the companies say they have gathered important data to set up additional tries in 2021.
China’s 39 launch efforts last year linked a record level of Chinese launch activities launched in 2018, but China achieved more successful space launches that year.
The four failures of the Chinese launch this year included an accident during the launch of the Long March 7A rocket in March, a failure in March 3B in April with the Indonesian Palapa N1 communications satellite, and problems during the launch of China ‘s light class Kuaizhou 11 and Kuaizhou 1A rockets in July and September.
Major successes for China’s space program in 2020 included the launch of the Tianwen 1 rover in the direction of Mars in July, and the launch, landing and return of the Chang’e 5 moon sample collection in December.
Russian rockets delivered 17 payload loads around the runway in 2020, with the venerable Soyuz launcher undertaking 15 of the flights. Russia’s heavier Proton and Angara launch vehicles each completed one mission last year.
In addition to launches with Russian military payloads, the Soyuz missions launched two crew members to the International Space Station, two Progress logistics flights to the station and three groups of more than 30 satellites for OneWeb’s commercial broadband network.
Soyuz rockets were also launched on two missions with Emirate and French military reconnaissance satellites from the European-based Ruin Center in Guyana, in French Guiana. The flights were operated by Arianespace, the French provider of launch services, but Russian engineers and technicians built and assembled the Soyuz amplifiers and helped with the launch.
European rockets, which are also operated by Arianespace, were launched five times from French Guiana in 2020. Three Ariane-5 rockets successfully took off from French Guiana with commercial communications satellites for Eutelsat, Intelsat, Sky Perfect JSAT, B-SAT and the Indian. Space Research Organization, a South Korean weather satellite, and a satellite service vehicle for Northrop Grumman’s subsidiary Space Logistics.
The smaller Vega rocket program, led by the Italian, failed once in two launch attempts last year.
Japan’s four launch efforts last year – all successful – included three flights of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ workhorse H-2A rocket. The H-2A missions transported two Japanese defense satellites to their orbit and harnessed the Hope Mars orbit for the United Arab Emirates.
The ninth and final launch of the more powerful twin-engine H-2B rocket in May has increased Japan’s latest first-generation HTV cargo ship with several tons of supplies for the International Space Station.
India carried out two missions with its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle in November and December, following a months-long earthquake caused by restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic. Both delivered their payloads around the track.
Iran tried to launch two satellites in February and April, but only the second attempt was successful. And the Israeli Shavit launcher has successfully launched the country’s Ofek 16 military satellite into orbit, the first Israeli satellite launcher since 2016.
The space coast in Florida last year offered more groundbreaking than anywhere else, with 30 successful missions coming from launch facilities at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and the Kennedy Space Center.
Prior to 2020, the previous record for launch from the space coast reaching orbit 29 was a point set in 1966. There were 31 attempts to download the orbit from Cape Canaveral, plus two test flights in the suborbital state of the Apollo-era Saturn 1B launcher, for a total of 33 space launches from Florida in 1966, according to a launch log provided by Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is being tracked to track global satellite and launch activities.
A run to break the record will have to wait another year.
Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station was the most used launch platform in 2020, with 14 Falcon 9 missions taking off from there.
China’s launch sites at Jiuquan and Xichang each hosted 13 satellite launches in 2020. The Baikonur food modromes in Kazakhstan, the Russian Plesetsk food modrom, the privately operated rocket laboratory in New Zealand, and the Guiana space center in South America have past year had seven launches each. .
Here is the breakdown of attempts to launch the orbits of spacecraft around the world, with numbers in parentheses representing failed missions:
- Cape Canaveral Space Force Station / Kennedy Space Center, Florida: 30 (0)
- Jiuquan, China: 13 (2)
- Xichang, China: 13 (1)
- Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan: 7 (0)
- Space Center in Guyana, French Guiana: 7 (1)
- Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand: 7 (1)
- Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Russia: 7 (0)
- Taiyuan, China: 7 (0)
- Wenchang, China: 5 (1)
- Tanegashima Space Center, Japan: 4 (0)
- Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, Virginia: 3 (0)
- Pacific Spaceport Complex, Alaska: 2 (2)
- Satish Dhawan Space Center, India: 2 (0)
- The Bo 3 platform, Yellow Sea: 1 (0)
- Imam Khomeini Space Harbor, Iran: 1 (1)
- Mojave Air and Space Port (747 aircraft set-up point): 1 (1)
- Palmachim Airbase, Israel: 1 (0)
- Shahroud, Iran: 1 (0)
- Vandenberg Air Force Base, California: 1 (0)
- Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia: 1 (0)
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