SpaceX Continues Its Record-Setting Streak

SpaceX has turned its launch schedule into something resembling a commuter timetable. The company closed out 2025 with 165 orbital Falcon 9 missions, topping its own annual record for the sixth year in a row and averaging nearly a launch every other day. The climb has been steep: 25 orbital flights in 2020, then 31, 61, 96, 134, and now 165. The pace leaves competitors trailing far behind, notes Space.com: SpaceX flew almost twice as many orbital missions as China this year, and accounted for roughly 85% of all US orbital launches.

Every one of those 165 trips relied on the Falcon 9, with its reusable first stage returning safely to Earth in all but three cases. Two of the no-return launches were heavy-duty missions carrying Spainsat NG communications satellites to geostationary transfer orbit, leaving too little fuel for the booster to come home. The third was a Starlink flight in March: the booster initially landed on a drone ship but toppled after a fire damaged a landing leg. Starlink dominated SpaceX's manifest overall, accounting for 123 of the launches and carrying 3,000 satellites, growing the active constellation to over 9,300.

Also on the record-breaking front: Florida's Space Coast saw a triple-digit number of launches for the first time ever in 2025, reports Central Florida Public Media. Florida Today reports 109 rockets—101 of them belonging to SpaceX—lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center.