How many rockets have been launched into space?

The first orbital launch was Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957, aboard a Soviet R-7. In the 1960s the space race pushed the pace above a hundred flights a year, and between 1965 and 1990 the Soviet Union alone flew more than 90 orbital missions a year. After the USSR's collapse the rate fell to 60-80 worldwide launches a year and stayed there until the mid-2010s. Adding up the whole period, independent records count more than 7,000 orbital attempts, with a historical success rate slightly above 90% (as of September 2026).

Reuse of the Falcon 9's first stage and the deployment of constellations like Starlink have changed the scale. More than 200 orbital launches were logged in 2023, more than 250 in 2024, and more than 300 in 2025, figures never seen before. The United States accounts for most of them, followed by China, which already tops 60 flights a year, with Russia, Europe, India, and Japan far behind. A single rocket, the Falcon 9, has flown more than 500 missions since 2010, most with already-flown first stages.

The figure depends on the definition. The counts above include only orbital attempts, meaning vehicles whose goal was to reach orbit, whether they succeeded or not. Left out are the thousands of suborbital rockets, from the German V-2s of the 1940s to sounding rockets and today's tourist flights, as well as ballistic missiles. If cataloged objects in orbit are counted instead, the figure is different: more than 60,000 objects tracked throughout history, including satellites, stages, and fragments.