Another Record Number of Rockets Launched During 2025

NASA Nears New Era of Exploration

By Bob Granath

Early on the morning of Dec. 17, 2025, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center with a group of Starlink satellites to provide internet to underserved areas. It was the 109th launch of the year, breaking the record of 93 launches during the previous 12 months. As 2026 dawned, NASA also stands at the cusp of a new era of exploration as the agency prepares to renew human exploration of the Moon.

The Florida spaceport continues to show why Kennedy is the world’s premier multi-user spaceport. Together with Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, new records have become the norm. In 2024, 72 rockets launched eclipsing the mark of 57 in 2022. During the peak of NASA’s Gemini Program, the previous record was 33 launched in 1966 during the lead-up to the Apollo lunar landing effort.

Engineers and technicians at Kennedy are in the finals stages of preparing to launch four astronauts to travel to the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years. Aboard an Orion spacecraft, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen will loop beyond the lunar surface, venturing farther away than humans ever traveled before. Plans call for the Artemis II flight to pave the way for landing on the lunar surface for long-term presence for science and exploration.

Jared Isaacman was sworn in as NASA’s new administrator on Dec. 18, 2025. In a year-end message to agency employees, he stressed the importance of returning to humanity’s exploration beyond Earth.

“The success of Artemis II is rightfully our highest priority,” he said. “We have our very best (working) on this program. We have not undertaken a human spaceflight mission to the lunar environment since Apollo 17, and we will not launch until we are absolutely ready.”

Artemis II is scheduled for a two-hour launch window beginning at 9:41 p.m. EST on Feb. 6, 2026, with a Space Launch System rocket lifting off from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy. The four astronauts plan to venture around the Moon aboard their Orion spacecraft on the 10-day Artemis II mission.

Commercial Launch Providers

The majority of the launches, 101, were SpaceX’s Falcon 9s. United Launch Alliance, a limited liability company owned equally by Lockheed Martin and Boeing, launched six — five Atlas V’s and one of their new Vulcan launch vehicles.

On Aug. 12, 2025, a 72-foot Vulcan rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral on its third mission, launching the USSF-106 payload. It was a mission to orbit two satellites for the United States Space Force.

During 2025, Blue Origin launched its first two New Glenn rockets. Lifting off from refurbished Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, their 321-foot-tall rocket is named for legendary astronaut and former U.S. senator, John Glenn.

The first New Glenn launched Jan. 16 on a “pathfinder” flight. For the second, a New Glenn deployed NASA’s Mars-bound Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, or ESCAPADE, mission. The twin spacecraft were designed to study Mars’ solar wind and magnetosphere — the region surrounding an astronomical object. On this second flight, New Glenn’s first stage booster also was successfully retrieved, landing aboard a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

On March 22, 2023, Relativity Space launched its first rocket, the Terran 1. The new launch vehicle is the first three-dimensional, or 3D, printed rocket. The 3D printing process is the action or practice of creating a physical object from a three-dimensional digital model.

At 110 feet tall, Terran 1 was the largest-ever 3D printed object. It lifted off from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 16, successfully reaching space, verifying that 3D printed rockets are structurally viable. The company retired that version of their rocket and now is moving on to a larger, reusable 284-foot Terran R launch vehicle.

Relativity Space is renovating Launch Complex-16 at Cape Canaveral to support their Terran R. It is designed to be a heavy-lift two-stage rocket and partially reusable. The first launch is planned for later this year.

Ongoing Space Station Work

During the past 12 months, two crews were launched to the International Space Station from Kennedy. On March 14, 2025, Crew-10 lifted off with NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov of Russia. Their six-month stay aboard the orbiting laboratory concluded Aug. 9.

Isaacman recently announced on that the Crew-11 astronauts would return earlier than planned. NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, along with JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov lifted off Aug. 1, 2025.

“Teams are monitoring a medical concern with a crew member currently living and working aboard the orbital laboratory, who is stable,” he said at a Jan. 8, 2026 news conference. “NASA is working with SpaceX, and its international partners to review options to launch the Crew-12 mission earlier. Crew-11 returned to Earth, splashing down off the coast of California on Jan. 15.

Once aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway along with European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot of France and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev of Crew-12 will join Expedition 74 crewmembers who are currently working there. NASA astronaut Christopher Williams, along with Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Kud-Sverchko and Sergei Mikayev were launched aboard Soyuz MS-28 on Nov. 27, 2025 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

In his message to NASA employees, Isaacman looked ahead to the mission noting that NASA plans to conclude operations aboard the space station in 2030. This will allow the agency to focus on exploration of the Moon and Mars.

“We are looking for every opportunity to prioritize the highest-value science (and) streamlining approval for experiments,” he said. “Our objective is to maximize every bit of life remaining on the space station program. (In the future, we want to) unlock an orbital economy that generates demand for multiple future commercial stations thus necessitating more people living and working in space.”

During 2025, three Commercial Resupply Services missions were launched from Kennedy to the space station. The NASA-SpaceX CRS-32 mission lifted off on April 21 and CRS-33 on Aug. 24 each launched atop Falcon 9 rockets sending the company’s Dragon spacecraft with thousands of pounds of experiments and supplies for the orbiting outpost. On Sept. 14, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched a Northrop Grumman Cygnus XL re-supply spacecraft to the space station.

Exploration Beyond Earth

In addition to launch of ESCAPADE, NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, launched Sept. 24, 2025. The spacecraft is designed to explore and map the boundaries of the Earth’s heliosphere — the protective bubble created by the solar wind that encapsulates our entire solar system. It also will study how the heliosphere interacts with the local galactic neighborhood and beyond.

Continuing NASA’s robotic exploration of the Moon in advance of sending humans to the lunar surface, a lunar lander launched to the Moon on a SpaceX Falcon 9 on Jan. 15, 2025. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander touched down March 2 on the Moon. It collected science data and performed operations under the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program as plans continue to establish a long-term lunar presence.

“Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 marks the longest surface duration commercial mission on the Moon to date, collecting extraordinary science data that will benefit humanity for decades to come,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “With NASA’s CLPS initiative, American companies are now at the forefront of an emerging lunar economy that lights the way for the agency’s exploration goals on the Moon and beyond.”

Isaacman recently looked ahead to future Artemis missions to begin an ongoing human presence on the Moon.

“At the program level, we are … preparing for American astronauts to make the grand return,” he said. “We are working with our partners (to) deliver the infrastructure required to realize the full scientific and economic potential of the lunar surface.”

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