SpaceX’s 61 successful launches last year tied a 42-year old record set by the Soviet Union in 1980 and propelled the United States to a world-leading 87 launch attempts. The company accounted for 32.6 percent of 186 launches worldwide.

ABL Space’s RS1 rocket failed shortly after liftoff from its launch pad at the Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska (PSCA) on Tuesday, the company said.

After months of buildup about the first orbital launch of satellites from UK soil, the first launch ever from Western Europe, the beginning of a new era in British spaceflight, Virgin Orbit’s Cosmic Girl Boeing 747 dropped the LauncherOne rocket over the Atlantic Ocean off the southern coast of Ireland. The booster’s Newton 3 first stage engine ignited and shut down, the second stage separated and its Newton 4 engine ignited. All appeared to be nominal.

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U.S. companies led the world last year with 87 orbital launch attempts on the strength of SpaceX’s record-tying 61 launches. There were 84 successes, two failures and one partial failure in a year that saw more than 2,100 satellites launched.

Virgin Orbit’s (NAS: VORB) much hyped “Start Me Up” launch from the United Kingdom failed on Monday, sending nine satellites plunging to their doom and the company’s stock price sinking to its lowest point ever. The failure raised more questions about the financial viability of Richard Branson’s cash-strapped company.

While the first week of 2023 saw only one launch worldwide, things will get a lot busier in week 2. Virgin Orbit is set to conduct its first launch from the UK, ABL Space hopes to launch its first rocket ever, and SpaceX and China have three launches apiece on their manifests.

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NASA will received a sample from one asteroid and launch a mission to another, ESA will send a probe to study Jupiter and its icy moons, and multiple space telescopes are on launch manifests this year.

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SpaceX’s massive Starship/Super Heavy launcher leads a list of more than two dozen new launch vehicles that could have their maiden flights this year. The manifest included new launchers from established players Arianespace and United Launch Alliance as well as scrappy startups across the globe. Payload capacities to low Earth orbit range from 100 metric tons down to 65 kg.

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In April 2018, NASA announced that it would no longer build robotic moon landers, but that it would pay private companies to deliver instruments to the surface under its new Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Companies would supplement relatively meager NASA funding by selling the remaining payload space to other parties. NASA said CLPS would take “shots on goal,” with some failures expected.

Five years later, the program faces a major test with the launch of as many as three CLPs missions in 2023. These spacecraft will be part of a group of seven lunar landers launched this year, including one built by a private Japanese company and three others constructed by the Japanese, Indian and Russian space agencies.

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The privatization of human spaceflight is set to accelerate this year with an increase in the number of commercial launches to the International Space Station (ISS) and the long-delayed start of suborbital space tourism flights by Virgin Galactic. Professional astronauts will continue to rotate to and from ISS and China’s Tiangong space station.

CNBC reports that SpaceX is raising another $750 million in funding that values the company at $137 billion. Last month, Bloomberg first reported that SpaceX was allowing insiders to sell at $77 per share, which would have put the company’s valuation near $140 billion. The company raised more than $2 billion in 2022, including a $250 million round in July, and was valued at $127 billion during an equity round in May, CNBC previously […]

Happy New Year to all and welcome to the first S-SPACⁱ of 2023.

SpaceX started off the year with a boom on Tuesday with the launch of its Transporter-6 rideshare mission from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The Falcon 9 first stage booster touched down on land instead of an off-shore drone ship, sending a sonic boom echoing across the Sunshine State.