Quarterly Launch Report: US in the Lead Thanks to SpaceX
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
There were 27 orbital launch attempts with 26 successes and one failure during the first quarter of 2021. The United States accounted for nearly half the total with 13 launches behind nine flights by SpaceX.
Orbital Launches, First Quarter 2021
| Nation | Successes | Failures | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 13 | 0 | 13 |
| China | 7 | 1 | 8 |
| Russia | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| India | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Total | 26 | 1 | 27 |
China launched eight times with one failure. Russia launched five times and India once. Europe and Japan are not on the board yet.
Launches by Booster
U.S. Launches
Record: 13-0
SpaceX led all providers with nine launches of the Falcon 9, accounting for one-third of the global total. Seven of those flights carried 420 Starlink broadband satellites, helping to raise the number of spacecraft launched to 1,385 with 1,321 still in orbit.
| Launch Vehicle | Nation | Successes | Failures | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Falcon 9 | USA | 9 | 0 | 9 |
| Soyuz | Russia | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| Long March 4C | China | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| Long March 3B | China | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Electron | USA | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Antares | USA | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| LauncherOne | USA | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Long March 7A | China | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| PSLV | India | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Hyperbola-1 | China | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 26 | 1 | 27 |
A Falcon 9 launched the Turksat 5A satellite on Jan. 7. The spacecraft is providing Ku-band television broadcast services to Turkey and other nations in the region.
On Jan. 24, a Falcon 9 launched a world record 143 satellites on its Transporter-1 rideshare mission. The payloads included 120 CubeSats, 11 microsatellites, 10 Starlink satellites, and 2 transfer stages.
SpaceX has additional Transporter missions planned for later this year. The company’s entry into the small satellite rideshare market has put pressure on smaller launch providers like Rocket Lab, which announced plans to develop a larger booster than the small Electron the company now operates.
The Transporter-1 mission marked the quickest turnaround — 27 days — between flights of a Falcon 9 first stage. A first stage flew for a record ninth time during the Starlink 21 mission on March 14.
On March 4 , SpaceX recovered its 75th first stage. The company landed eight of the nine Falcon 9 first stages in the first quarter. A first stage used to launch 60 Stalink satellites on Feb. 15 missed the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship due to an early engine shutdown.
Launches by Other U.S. Companies
Three other American companies — Northrop Grumman, Virgin Orbit and Rocket Lab — conducted a total of four launches in the first quarter.
On Feb 20, a Northrop Grumman Antares rocket launched a Cygnus freighter to the International Space Station (ISS). It was the 15th operational Cygnus resupply mission.
Virgin Orbit scored its first successful launch on Jan. 17. A LauncherOne booster orbited 10 CubeSats for NASA after being dropped over the Pacific Ocean from the company’s Boeing 747 Cosmic Girl jetliner.
The launch was conducted under NASA’s Venture Class Launch Services program. The 10 payloads were part of the space agency’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellites program.
It was Virgin Orbit’s second launch. The company suffered a failure on LauncherOne’s first flight in May 2020 when a propellant line broke.
On Feb. 2, Rocket Lab Electron booster launched the GMS-T communications satellite for OHB Group of Germany from Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. OHB said little about the purpose of the satellite.
On March 22, an Electron launched seven payloads, including:
- BlackSky optical Earth observation satellite;
- Rocket Lab’s Photon Pathstone mission;
- M2 CubeSat spacecraft for the University of New South Wales and the Royal Australian Air Force;
- Centauri 3 data relay satellite for Fleet Space Technologies;
- Veery Hatchling weather technology demonstration CubeSat for Care Weather Technologies;
- Myriota 7 data relay satellite for Myriota; and
- Gunsmoke-J technology demonstration satellite for the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command.
Photon Pathstone is a modified Electron Kick Stage equipped with power management, thermal control, attitude control subsystems, reaction control system, deep-space radio, star trackers and other technology that allow it to function as a separate satellite.
Photon Pathstone is designed as a precursor to test systems for NASA’s Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) mission. Later this year, the CAPSTONE spacecraft will be placed in an elliptical orbit around the moon that will be later used for the human-tended lunar Gateway.
“As a precursor for Gateway, a Moon-orbiting outpost that is part of NASA’s Artemis program, CAPSTONE will help reduce risk for future spacecraft by validating innovative navigation technologies and verifying the dynamics of this halo-shaped orbit,” NASA said.
Chinese Launches
Record: 7-1
China has set a goal of launching more than 40 times this year, The total would exceed the 39 launch attempts the nation made in both 2018 and 2020.
In the first quarter, China notched seven successful launches and one failure. At least half of China’s launches carried military payloads. Nine Yaogan 31 military reconnaissance satellites were launched on three separate Long March 4C rockets in January, February and March.
On Feb. 4, a Long March 3B launched the TJS 6 test satellite from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. The spacecraft is believed to be a military early warning satellite.
On March 13, China conducted the first successful launch of its Long March 7A rocket one year after the variant failed during its maiden flight. The booster launched the Shiyan 9 experimental satellite, which official state media said would be used “for in-orbit tests of new technologies, including space environment monitoring.”
It was the Long March 7 booster family’s third success in four flights. Long March 7A differs from Long March 7 in that it uses a liquid third stage from the Long March 3B to launch communications satellites to geosynchronous orbit.
China plans for the Long March 7 to replace the Long March 2F booster that is currently used to launch crewed Shenzhou spacecraft. Long March 7 will also launch Tianzhou cargo ships to China’s first permanent space station. The Tianhe-1 core module of the country’s first permanent space station at the end of April.
On Jan. 19, a Long March 3B rocket orbited the Tiantong 1-03 mobile communications satellite. The spacecraft is being used along with two earlier Tiantong spacecraft to provide mobile voice, short message and data services to the Asia-Pacific, Middle East and African regions.
A Long March 4C launched the Gaofen 12-02 Earth observation from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on March 31. Chinese media said the satellite will be used for urban planning, land surveys, crop yield estimates, road network design and disaster planning.
China’s lone launch failure came on Feb. 1 when iSpace’s four-stage Hyperbola-1 booster veered off course after liftoff from Jiuquan. The rocket was carrying several unidentified payloads.
iSpace company said an errand piece of foam insulation designed to fall cleanly off the booster instead impeded the function of one of four grid fins on Hyperbola-1’s first stage. When the foam later broke free, it changed the angle of the grid fin and caused the booster to fly out of control.
It was the second launch attempt for the nominally private company. In July 2019, a Hyperbola-1 booster successfully orbited several payloads, becoming the first non-governmental organization to accomplish that task.
Observers said the Hyperbola-1 rocket featured wider second, third and fourth stages than those used for the first launch. The upgraded booster is capable of placing payloads weighing up to 300 kg in a 310-mile high sun synchronous orbit.
Russian Launches
Record: 5-0
Russia launched variants of its venerable Soyuz booster five times during the first quarter. Russian government missions included:
- Arktika-M1 weather/emergency communications spacecraft;
- Lotos-S1 electronic intelligence satellite; and
- Progress 77P resupply ship to ISS.
On March 22, a Soyuz booster launched 38 satellites from 18 nations as part of a rideshare mission managed by GK Launch Services.
The largest payload was the Korean Aerospace Research Institute’s (KARI) CAS500 1 Earth observation satellite. The 500-kg satellite includes a high-resolution electro optical payload for returning images from low earth orbit.
Other notable payloads on the flight included:
- Astroscale’s ELSA-d active debris removal demonstration spacecraft;
- four Earth-imaging microsatellites for Axelspace of Japan;
- two wideband and high data-rate communications satellite for Kepler Communications of Canada;
- first spacecraft of Sateliot’s 96-satellite Internet of Things (IoT) constellation;
- three Technion ADELIS-SAMSON satellites designed to demonstrate long-term autonomous cluster flights of multiple spacecraft;
- four Beesat technology demonstration satellites for the Technical University of Berlin;
- GAUSS SRL’s UNISAT-7 spacecraft carrier, which separately deployed six nanosatellites; and
- IoT satellites for Lacuna Space, Hiber Global and TELNET of Tunisia.
On March 25, a Soyuz launched 36 OneWeb broadband satellites. It was the fifth Soyuz launch for OneWeb, bringing the total number of satellites launched to 146. The company’s initial constellation will consist of 648 spacecraft.
Indian Launch
Record: 1-0
On. Feb. 28, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle orbited Brazil’s Amazonia-1 Earth observation satellite. The spacecraft carries an optical camera to monitor deforestation and other environmental changes in the Amazon region.
The launch also carried 18 secondary payloads:
- 12 SpaceBEE communications satellites for U.S.-based Swarm Technologies;
- 3 UNITYsats with amateur radio and IoT technology jointly developed by Jeppiaar Institute of Technology, Sriperumbudur; G.H. Raisoni College of Engineering, Nagpur; and Sri Shakti Institute of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore;
- Sindhu Netra ship tracking satellite for the Indian Defence Research and Development Organisation;
- SAI-1 NanoConnect-2 technology demonstration satellite built by the National Autonomous University of Mexico; and
- Satish Dhawan Sat designed to study space radiation by Space Kidz India.
Launches by Spaceport
Florida’s Space Coast remained the busiest launch range in the world with seven flights from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and two more from the adjoining Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX conducted all nine launches.
| Launch Site | Location | Successes | Failures | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cape Canaveral | USA | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| Jiuquan | China | 4 | 1 | 5 |
| Baikonur | Kazakhstan | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Kennedy Space Center | USA | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Mahia Peninsula | New Zealand | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Xichang | China | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Mojave | USA | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Plesetsk | Russia | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Satish Dhawan | India | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Vostochny | Russia | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Wallops Island | USA | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Wenchang | China | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Total | 26 | 1 | 27 |
U.S.-based Rocket Lab launched twice from Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. Northrop Grumman launched the Antares booster from Wallops Island in Virginia.
The Mojave Air and Space Port supported its first orbital launch on Jan. 17 when Virgin Orbit’s Boeing 747 Cosmic Girl took off with LauncherOne under its wing.
China divided its eight launches between the Jiuquan (5), Xichang (2) and Wenchang (1) spaceports.
Russia launched three times from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and one time each from the Plesetsk and Vostochny cosmodromes in Russia.
India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre hosted its only launch on Feb. 28.
22 responses to “Quarterly Launch Report: US in the Lead Thanks to SpaceX”
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And SpaceX is hiring a lot of workers in Texas for Starlink and Starbase according to Elon’s Twitter posts. He also donated $30 million to help out schools in South Texas and revitalize the Brownsville area.
The 30 mil is to make sure that when the FAA inspector starts asking questions, the good folks of Cameron County can be counted on to respond with, “What explosions?”
More likely it is to improve the quality of the local workforce so Elon Musk doesn’t have to import Californians to work at Starbase.?
I was thinking that the money was to improve quality of life so that he COULD import Californians to work at Starbase.
I have been to both Brownsville and LA recently and it’s clear where the quality of life is better.
All I saw in LA was homeless camps everywhere, garbage on the streets, horrible traffic jams and $4 gallon gas. It may have been a decent place in the past but looks like something out of Mad Max now which is why folks are fleeing from it.
Brownsville is a clean town, few homeless, nice uncrowded beaches on South Padre, little traffic and gas at $2.40 gal.
Yup. I grew up in LA, retired about 70 miles east of it, and never drive to or through it. But many of the residents absolutely love it. They don’t hang out in the homeless camps, and can easily afford the four dollar gas. They love the weather, night life, coast and mountains. They’ve got Vegas to the northeast, San Francisco to the northwest, and National Parks in every direction. I believe that these are the people that Elon is attempting to lure to Texas.
The weather in L.A. probably averages better than it does in Brownsville, but the “night life” in L.A. is mostly a distant memory as bars and restaurants have suffered casualty levels that make Omaha Beach look like Spring Break. Speaking of which, South Padre Island is said to be quite charming this time of year and, unlike CA, TX is pretty much open for business. Parks in CA have been closed for a long time too.
SpaceXers, in any case, come from all over the country to work at whichever work site they wind up at. The Hawthorne workforce is not remotely a locals-only proposition. The engineers, in particular, work enough hours that most local diversions, of whatever sort, are likely rare indulgences.
Good points. Personally I would miss the mountains. But then I’ve never been accused of being a workaholic. That’s how I ended up being a technological knucklehead retired in a trailer park…and loving it.
Starlink is a slow motion disaster and never should have been allowed. The corruption and influence peddling that enabled it should be under investigation. Unfortunately it was the Obama/Biden administration that created the monster in the first place.
No thanks for spacex:(
7.5 km/s seems like a brisk pace to me. And if you are referring to the rate of deployment, frenetic might be a more appropriate description. They’ve launched 430 Starlink satellites so far in the current calendar year.
SpaceX got its first NASA cash infusion in 2006. Obama took office in 2009. You can give him credit (or blame, if you prefer) for sticking with the plan, though, and continuing it with commercial crew.
Evidence for ice on the Moon in 2010 should have fundamentally changed the course of the space agency as it made a Moonbase practical. It was a tremendous development that was completely suppressed. The Falcon had zero lunar application and thus the Moon became a verboten subject for ten years. Musk then decided he was going to take over the planet by way of tens of thousands of pieces of space junk and that build-it-and-they-will-come flim flam became the new hobby project. There is no end to the damage a single “entrepreneur” can do if he has made the right back room deals. The worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration.
It’s interesting to see that if the US business sector vertically integrated in the USA with American workers and kept all the enterprises facilities here in the US, the US can still have a command lead over the rest of the world and command 50% of world output. When the business sector decides to work for team America, we can regain the commanding lead we’ve had before.
The business sector is one piece of the puzzle. There is also the workforce participation and government involvement.
To compete on the international stage, a business must have access to workers willing to provide value for value at least equal (productivity) to the competition. Many American workers, and Americans that choose not to be workers, do not put forth the effort to be as productive as they should. Minimum wage workers complaining next to a sign begging for CDL drivers to start at $60K for instance.
Government regulations and requirements as well as holes in the same can make business less competitive. In my construction business, it is not possible for me to compete with companies that are willing to work around the rules. If all companies worked the way I need to in regards to permitting, insurance, taxes, drug testing, and QC on the job, new house prices would be at least 20% more than the already inflated rate now. We pretty much stay with commercial, industrial, and high end remodels as we can’t compete with track builders. Too many items to list here. These are federal, state, and local problems cutting across all party lines.
There are plenty of problems with the business sector including the focus on near term profits at the expense of long term planning. With businesses competing locally, this is a self solving problem as the better ones out compete the mediocre ones. On the national and international level though, simple solutions and unintended consequences too often go together. Focusing on one part of the puzzle will often lead to the others derailing your solutions. One major factor is blaming others for our problems which distracts from focusing on our own solutions.
Yes, in theory regulation should be about creating a level playing field so competition is based on the quality of the product. Home prices costing more would not be an issue if Americans earned more, but the flood of cheap foreign workers, especially H1 visa holders, keeps wages low. The same is true when there are low tariffs on imported goods. U.S. immigration laws and tariffs should at the minimum mirror those of other nations who protect their domestic workers and industries from competition by other nations.
Don’t have time for a proper reply. I think It more important to work on our own issues than focusing on tariffs and immigration. High productivity doesn’t need protection.
Americas immigration problem is not legal immigration. Our immigration system is perfectly fine for the most part, it’s just that immigrants insist in breaking it. That’s the most significant stress on wages in the US. Back in the 70’s my next door neighbor was a carpenter in construction. He had two muscle cars, and two story house, and a color TV, with s swimming pool. His next door neighbor was a University of Oklahoma administrator. There’s no way a construction worker would earn that kind of living today. Illegal immigrants have turned whole sectors of this economy into a third world nation. Construction, landscaping, farm work, child care, all should be much higher wage professions. Inflation should be a problem in an economy like ours. Notice how inflation ceased to be a problem after the early 1980’s? Right at the time when illegal immigrants really started to flood in very large numbers. They were a part of a process of devaluing work while the value of the product would continue to rise. Asia also played a part, but illegal immigration was a big part of the process here at home.
Yes, the collapse of Mexico’s Peso in the 1980’s encourage many workers from Mexico to seek work in the U.S.A. The end of the Bracero Program in the 1960’s at the insistence of unions made it easy by establishing the pathways for illegal entry.
But tech workers are also part of the problem especially in STEM. Note that countries like China and India allow very few foreigners to work there.
https://www.bloomberg.com/g…
The STEM Graduate System Is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It.
By Rachel Rosenthal
March 10, 2021
“Because foreign STEM graduates are concentrated in certain occupations, their impact on wages is stark even if absolute numbers aren’t huge. In 2018, some 53,000 foreign students earned degrees in computer science or related engineering fields, two-thirds of which were master’s degrees, according to calculations by Hal Salzman, a professor at Rutgers University’s John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, and Khudodod Khudododov, a research analyst, using data from the National Center for Education Statistics. That year, the U.S. had between 96,000 and 143,000 openings in IT occupations that typically went to candidates with a bachelor’s degree or higher in computer science or engineering, they found. So, OPT participants accounted for anywhere from one-third to one-half of new hires. If you add H-1B candidates, up to two-thirds of openings went to guest workers, according to Salzman.”
I don’t disagree with a lot of what you’re saying. Our culture has embraced lazyness, it no longer glorifies work or individual effort, nor does it push ownership of your work with one exception, money. As you’ve stated, this is part of a problem set that spans party lines. As for educating a workforce? I don’t know about your state, but the private sector schools in AZ are doing just as poor a job as the public schools. And my Trump thumper brother still sends his daughter to public school because he balks at the shopping center cum academy vs a real bricks and mortar school with real restrooms, a cafeteria, gym, library, playground, and activity rooms.
One of the problems I have noticed in our discussions is that the effects are different in different areas. Perceptions are therefore different based on different experiences. I think we are in agreement though that work ethic is a serious issue.
Well, Trump was turning that around, but now His Feebleness seems intent on restoring the sky-high corporate tax rates that drove most of that off-shoring in the first place.
I’ll respect you people more when you just admit to your desire for corporations to have negative taxation. Ie, where like in China, they are given money from the government, and not taxed. Your slogan should become “Tax someone else, just not me.”.
Debt levels are so high it’s only a matter of time until we return to 1950’s levels of taxation. Everyone else does fine with high taxes except Americans. Actually we do just fine too, we just complain. American business is going to have to wake up to the fact that they’ll have to work harder, and get paid less take home pay.
It’s funny also that you don’t bring up the point that at current spending levels, even the higher taxes proposed won’t cover the fake money generation. Maybe because you’ll be reminded that you guys are just as bad as the Dems are now. You’re not conservatives anymore, you’re the party of Trump now. And you stand for whatever he stands for. This is all going to end the hard way.
Congratulations to SpaceX on another successful Starlink Launch. That makes 300 Starlink satellites in a single month. It is also the 10th Falcon 9 launch in 3 months. Looks like they are hitting their pace with Starlink launches.