Through the end of 2025, I had noticed SpaceX launches were close to three a week or every other day. I posted about this on New Year's Day this year, writing in that post:
SpaceX shattered their launch record in '25 with 165 launches which works out to one every 3.1 days. These were orbital launches using only the Falcon 9. They also have five sub-orbital test flights of Starship. In case you don't watch them closely, they've set a new record every year for six years.
The record has risen from 25 orbital liftoffs in 2020 to 31 (2021) to 61 (2022) to 96 (2023) to 134 (2024) and, now, to a whopping 165.
As 2026 has started unfolding, they seem to be falling back from that pace. Ars Technica goes into a deeper dive into what's going on today, in a piece entitled "SpaceX is starting to move on from the world’s most successful rocket." It's written by Stephen Clark, whom I still tend to think of as "the new guy," but I'm pretty sure he has been there over a year.
It is far too soon to mention retirement, but astute observers of the space industry have noticed SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket is not launching as often as it used to.
The decline is modest so far, and it does not signal any problem at SpaceX or with the Falcon 9. Rather, it is a manifestation of SpaceX’s eagerness to shift focus to the much larger Starship rocket, an enabler of what the company wants to do in space: missions to land on the Moon and Mars, orbital data centers, and next-gen Starlink.
This shouldn't be a secret, since SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said the company plans “maybe 140, 145-ish” Falcon launches in 2026, but that wasn't widely quoted - it was an interview in Time magazine. She went on to say, “this year we’ll still launch a lot, but not as much,” she said. “And then we’ll tail off our launches as Starship is coming online.”
The changes are most obvious here near Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, where SpaceX has been launching from two pads regularly: Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC or Slick 40) from the Space Force Station side and Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex-39A or LC-39A. LC-39A is out of the rotation for Falcon 9 launches, although it remains available for occasional flights of the more powerful, triple-core Falcon Heavy. There are relatively quite a lot fewer Falcon Heavy missions than Falcon 9, and those will launch from SLC-40 this year.
LC-39A is going to be the Space Coast home of Starship. Starships seem to all be intended for RTLS (Return To Launch Site) missions, while the smaller number of Falcon 9 missions had SpaceX retire recovery drone Just Read The Instructions (JRTI), leaving A Shortfall Of Gravitas (ASOG) as their only recovery drone ship in use on the east coast.
“With 39A becoming a primarily Falcon Heavy and Starship pad, we don’t actually need two operational droneships on the East Coast to maintain our Falcon manifest,” wrote Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s vice president of launch, in a post on X last month. The other landing vessel in Florida can support a launch and recovery every four days, according to Dontchev, and some Falcon missions can return their boosters to land onshore.
As you'll read at the link to X, "After 156 successful Falcon 9 landings, Just Read the Instructions will be fully dedicated to support Starship operations going forward."
The shift in emphasis to Starship on Cape Canaveral is going to reduce the number of launches from the Cape, at least in the short term, and may give the title of busiest launch site to Vandenberg. Depending on if Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance can meet their goals for launch numbers. With both New Glenn and Vulcan Centaur currently grounded, it's not looking very good for 2026.
A Falcon 9 rocket with multiple satellites for the National Reconnaissance
Office heads over the horizon after a predawn launch from Vandenberg Space
Force Base, California, on April 20, 2025. Credit: George Rose/Getty Images
Col. Brian Chatman, commander of the military unit overseeing Cape Canaveral’s launch range, said the Space Force is preparing for as many as 500 launches per year from Florida’s Space Coast by 2036. The growth will require new construction, access to utilities, and increased reliance on automation at the military ranges, which are responsible for ensuring public safety during rocket launches.
SpaceX aims to routinely launch Starships from multiple launch pads in Florida and Texas (it has not announced plans for a Starship pad in California), and last month, the Space Force selected Blue Origin to build a brand new launch pad for its New Glenn rocket on an undeveloped site at Vandenberg. Stoke Space and Relativity Space are building launch sites at Cape Canaveral. The only other orbital-class spaceport on federal property is at Wallops Island, Virginia, where Rocket Lab, Northrop Grumman, and Firefly Aerospace plan to base their rockets.
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