How many rockets went to orbit this year? Not the headlines, the whole year. This study compiles every orbital launch attempt of 2026 through October 10: 239 flights, 232 successes, 7 failures. Every number below is drawn from a single auditable source — the launch statistics tables on Wikipedia's 2026 in spaceflight page — and every cross-check we could run came back clean.
The short version: launches now happen daily. The longer version is who owns the sky.
Key findings
- 239 orbital launch attempts in the first 283 days of 2026 (January 3 to October 10): 232 succeeded, 7 failed — a 97.1% success rate with zero partial failures. A rocket left Earth about every 28 hours.
- One rocket family flew nearly half the world. SpaceX's Falcon (110 Falcon 9 + 3 Falcon Heavy) flew 113 missions — 47.3% of all orbital launches — with a perfect 113-for-113 record. That is more than China and Russia flew combined.
- The US out-launched China exactly 2 to 1: 140 US-origin launches vs. 70 Chinese. Russia, with 13, is a distant third; the rest of the world combined flew 16.
- Twelve new rockets reached orbit in 2026, including three partially reusable Chinese rockets (Long March 10B, Long March 12B, Pallas-1) — and China became only the second nation to recover an orbital booster (Long March 10B, July 10).
- Artemis II was the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. On April 1, four astronauts flew around the Moon; they traveled 252,756 miles from Earth, farther than any humans in history (per NASA). Five crewed orbital flights carried 18 travelers in 2026.
- Vandenberg overtook Cape Canaveral as the world's busiest spaceport: 62 launches (all successful) versus 54. Germany joined the orbital-launch club — the first orbital flight from West European soil.
Journalists: these findings are free to quote with credit to Calder Brief and a link to this page.
The cadence: a launch every 28 hours
239 launches in 283 days works out to about 5.9 per week — one every 28.4 hours. April was the peak: 31 launches in 30 days, more than one per day. Seven launches failed; January's three failures (the year's worst month) included India's PSLV-C62 and China's Ceres-2 maiden flight.
Orbital launch attempts per month, January–October 2026. October covers the 1st–10th only. Source: Wikipedia, "2026 in spaceflight" (CC BY-SA 3.0). See methodology.
Who flew: the US out-launched China 2 to 1
Rockets are assigned to the country that built them, not the spaceport they launched from. On that basis, US-origin rockets flew 140 missions (58.6%) and Chinese rockets 70 (29.3%) — exactly a two-to-one margin. Russia's 13 launches (5.4%) made it a distant third. Every other country combined flew 16. Germany earned its first-ever orbital launch, and South Korea flew its Nuri rocket successfully.
Orbital launches by country of rocket origin, Jan 1–Oct 10, 2026. Source: Wikipedia, "2026 in spaceflight" (CC BY-SA 3.0).
The rockets: Falcon flew nearly half the planet
This is the chart that matters. SpaceX's Falcon family — 110 Falcon 9s and 3 Falcon Heavies — flew 113 of the year's 239 launches (47.3%), all successfully. One company's workhorse flew more than China and Russia put together (83). China's Long March family was second at 47, and Rocket Lab's Electron was third at 16, also perfect. Everything else is single digits.
Orbital launches by rocket family, Jan 1–Oct 10, 2026. Source: Wikipedia, "2026 in spaceflight" (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Twelve new rockets, one reusability race
2026 was a bumper year for debuts: twelve new rocket configurations reached orbit for the first time — Ariane 64, Ceres-2, H3-30S, Kinetica 2, Long March 10B, Long March 12B, Pallas-1, Soyuz-2.1b/Volga, Soyuz-5, Starship Block 3, Tianlong-3, and Vikram-1. Nine of the twelve succeeded on their first try; Ceres-2 and Tianlong-3 failed, and Starship Block 3's first flight was only partially successful.
The deeper story is reusability going multipolar. On July 10, a Long March 10B's first stage landed on a ship at sea, making China the second nation ever to recover an orbital booster. LandSpace's Zhuque-3 did it too on August 18, and Galactic Energy's Pallas-1 flew a recoverable first stage on its September 1 debut. SpaceX, meanwhile, kept iterating Starship: suborbital tests in May and July, then the first orbital Starship flight in September, which deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites.
At the other end of the lifecycle, four rockets retired: Pegasus XL (its final flight on July 3, after the failed Swift-observatory rescue), the Atlas V 551, Firefly's Alpha Block I, and the Proton-M. The era of expendable icons is visibly ending.
The human year: Artemis II
Behind the cargo numbers, 2026 was a landmark year for people in space. Five crewed orbital flights carried 18 travelers: Crew-12, Soyuz MS-29, Crew-13, China's Shenzhou 23, and the one that mattered most — Artemis II.
On April 1, 2026, NASA launched four astronauts — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen — around the Moon on the Space Launch System. It was the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in December 1972, ending a 54-year gap. On April 6 the crew became the farthest-traveling humans in history — 252,756 miles from Earth, beating Apollo 13's record, per NASA — and splashed down in the Pacific on April 10.
113 of the year's 239 orbital launches were flown by one rocket family: SpaceX's Falcon. One company now launches nearly half the planet.
The full dataset: every rocket family
Every orbital launch attempt from January 1 through October 10, 2026, grouped by rocket family. Figures are from Wikipedia's "2026 in spaceflight" launch statistics tables (CC BY-SA 3.0). Countries follow that source's convention: the country of origin of the rocket, not the launch services provider or spaceport.
| # | Family | Country | Operator | Launches | OK | Failed | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Falcon 9 / Heavy | United States | SpaceX | 113 | 113 | 0 | 110 Falcon 9 + 3 Falcon Heavy; 47% of the world total |
| 2 | Long March 2/3/4/5/6/7/8/10/12 | China | CASC | 47 | 45 | 2 | LM-10B and LM-12B maiden flights in 2026 |
| 3 | Electron / HASTE | United States | Rocket Lab | 16 | 16 | 0 | Includes first HASTE orbital flight |
| 4 | Soyuz-2 (R-7) | Russia | Roscosmos | 11 | 11 | 0 | Soyuz-2.1b/Volga maiden flight |
| 5 | Kinetica 1/2 | China | CAS Space | 6 | 6 | 0 | Kinetica 2 maiden flight Mar 30 |
| 6 | Atlas V | United States | ULA | 4 | 4 | 0 | Atlas V 551 final flight — retirement |
| 7 | Ariane 6 | France | Arianespace | 4 | 4 | 0 | Ariane 64 maiden flight Feb 12 |
| 8 | Zhuque-2/3 | China | LandSpace | 4 | 4 | 0 | Zhuque-3 booster recovered Aug 18 |
| 9 | Jielong 3 | China | China Rocket | 4 | 4 | 0 | |
| 10 | Kuaizhou 11 | China | CASIC | 3 | 3 | 0 | |
| 11 | Ceres-1/2 | China | Galactic Energy | 2 | 1 | 1 | Ceres-2 maiden flight failed Jan 17 |
| 12 | Gravity-1 | China | Orienspace | 2 | 2 | 0 | |
| 13 | H3 | Japan | JAXA/MHI | 2 | 2 | 0 | H3-30S maiden flight Jun 12 |
| 14 | Vega C | Italy | Avio | 2 | 2 | 0 | |
| 15 | GSLV / PSLV | India | ISRO | 2 | 1 | 1 | PSLV-C62 failure in January |
| 16 | Alpha | United States | Firefly | 1 | 1 | 0 | Alpha Block I final flight |
| 17 | Angara-1.2 | Russia | Roscosmos | 1 | 1 | 0 | |
| 18 | KAIROS | Japan | Space One | 1 | 0 | 1 | Failure |
| 19 | Minotaur IV | United States | Northrop Grumman | 1 | 1 | 0 | |
| 20 | New Glenn | United States | Blue Origin | 1 | 0 | 1 | Failure on first reuse attempt |
| 21 | Nuri | South Korea | KARI | 1 | 1 | 0 | |
| 22 | Pallas-1 | China | Galactic Energy | 1 | 1 | 0 | Maiden flight Sep 1; first stage recovered |
| 23 | Pegasus XL | United States | Northrop Grumman | 1 | 1 | 0 | Final flight Jul 3 — retirement |
| 24 | Proton-M/DM-03 | Russia | Roscosmos | 1 | 1 | 0 | Final flight — retirement |
| 25 | SLS Block 1 | United States | NASA | 1 | 1 | 0 | Launched Artemis II |
| 26 | Spectrum | Germany | Isar Aerospace | 1 | 1 | 0 | Germany's first orbital launch; from Andøya, Norway |
| 27 | Starship Block 3 | United States | SpaceX | 1 | 1 | 0 | First orbital Starship flight (Sep); suborbital tests in May, Jul |
| 28 | Tianlong-3 | China | Space Pioneer | 1 | 0 | 1 | Maiden flight failed Apr 3 |
| 29 | Vikram-1 | India | Skyroot | 1 | 1 | 0 | Maiden flight Jul 18; India's first commercial rocket |
| 30 | Vulcan Centaur | United States | ULA | 1 | 1 | 0 |
Tracked total: 239 orbital launch attempts — 232 successful, 7 failed, 0 partial failures, January 1 to October 10, 2026.
Methodology
Scope. Orbital launch attempts from January 1 through October 10, 2026 (the source page's "last" launch date). Suborbital flights, static fires, and pad aborts are excluded. Country attribution follows the source's convention: the country of origin of the rocket, not the launch provider or spaceport.
Source. All launch counts — monthly totals, by-country, by-family, and by-spaceport tables — come from the English Wikipedia page 2026 in spaceflight, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, accessed October 12, 2026. The page's tables are maintained by spaceflight editors against primary launch logs; we spot-checked headline totals (239 / 232 / 7) against the monthly breakdown and found them consistent. Artemis II facts (April 1 launch, April 10 splashdown, 252,756 miles, farthest humans in history) are from NASA's official Artemis II releases, linked below.
Limitations. Wikipedia is a living document: figures can be revised as late-breaking launches are logged, and its "by country" and headline tables can lag each other by a few flights. New Glenn's 2026 failure is recorded as "first reuse" — a booster recovery attempt, not a payload loss to orbit. Starship's May and July 2026 tests were suborbital and are excluded from the orbital count; only the September orbital flight is included.
Corrections. Found an error or a qualifying launch we missed? Email tips@calderbrief.com. Verified corrections will be applied with a changelog note.
Sources
- Wikipedia, “2026 in spaceflight” (CC BY-SA 3.0) — orbital launch statistics: monthly totals, by country, by rocket, by spaceport, maiden flights, crewed flights: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_in_spaceflight (accessed October 12, 2026)
- NASA, “Meet NASA's Artemis II Crew During Houston Public Event” (Sept 2026) — launch April 1, splashdown April 10, 252,756 miles from Earth, farthest humans in history: nasa.gov
Dataset: 239 orbital launch attempts, Jan 1 – Oct 10, 2026. Published October 12, 2026. Licensed CC-BY 4.0: reuse with credit to Calder Brief.
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