2015 Space Launch Statistics

Orbital Launches in 2015 - Summary

Russia remains in the lead in 2015 with 29 orbital launches and 26 successes, maintaining its leading position for over a decade, though going through a bit of an up and down in 2015 as both of Russia’s workhorse launchers, Soyuz and Proton, had to deal with failures over the course of the year.

On the Russian side, the Soyuz launcher remains the most launched vehicle family, having delivered four three-person crews to orbit this year and maintaining a steady chain of supplies to the Space Station, despite running into trouble on a Progress cargo-delivery mission that failed in April at the moment of third stage shutdown and spacecraft separation due to unforeseen dynamics associated with the modified third stage of the Soyuz 2 rocket. Five Soyuz launches in 2015 were dedicated to military missions launching from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome with a focus on reconnaissance missions.

Soyuz 2-1v, a highly modified version of the Soyuz suitable for small payloads, conducted one flight – ending in failure at the point of spacecraft separation which could not be accomplished due to a defective separation mechanism leading to the untimely demise of the Kanopus ST submarine-watching satellite while a secondary payload was released into orbit.

>>Visit our Launch Vehicle Library for detailed technical information on all rockets flown in 2015

All eight Proton launches this year lifted communications satellites either for the military or the commercial sector. In May, Proton encountered a repeat failure involving the third stage steering engine that had also claimed the loss of an Ekspress communications satellite in 2014. Looking at the positive, Proton’s failures illuminated a design issue with the turbopump of the third stage steering engine which had caused a failure in the 1980s, but went unnoticed due to a lack of sensors and could have led to even more failures if not uncovered by Proton’s recent troubles.

Proton returned to flight in August and successfully flew out the remainder of its 2015 manifest that saw four government-operated missions and four commercial launches handled by International Launch Services

Russia’s Zenit rocket conducted a single mission in 2015 lifting a weather satellite to Geostationary Orbit in what may well be the final launch of the Russian-Ukrainian Zenit rocket that found itself in the midst of the arising conflict between the two countries. The light-lifters in the Russian rocket fleet conducted three missions – Dnepr lofted a remote sensing satellite for South Korea while Rockot flew twice to deliver groups of three communications satellites to low orbits – three under civilian and three under military operation.

Atlas V remains the most-flown American rocket this year with nine successful missions including a rare commercial satellite launch with Morelos 3 in a manifest still dominated by government-contracted flights, lofting military satellites for communications, navigation, and reconnaissance as well as the semi-classified X-37B orbital test vehicle. Atlas V launched one NASA mission in 2015 – a package of four spacecraft dispatched to elliptical orbits to conduct a study of Earth’s magnetosphere. A first for the workhorse rocket came in December when it made its debut launch to the International Space Station, sending the Cygnus OA-4 spacecraft into Low Earth Orbit.

Falcon 9 could only make seven launches this year, given the six-month stand-down in the wake of the CRS-7 failure that dampened SpaceX’s aspirations of establishing a rapid turnaround between launches to tackle the company’s booked manifest. SpaceX came back in December and left a mark in history when the Falcon 9 first stage booster conducted a successful return to an onshore landing after delivering the second stage and 11 Orbcomm satellites on their way to orbit. This marked the first successful propulsive landing of a rocket stage involved in an orbital mission.

SpaceX performed two successful ISS cargo missions in 2015, sent the Deep Space Climate Observatory on its way, lifted a pair of communications satellites in a single launch and delivered Turkmenistan’s first satellite to orbit.

The Delta family conducted three missions, two Delta IV launches with the GPS IIF-9 and WGS-7 satellites and a lone Delta II mission dedicated to NASA’s SMAP mission as the venerable launcher approaches its retirement. The only other U.S. launcher to fly in 2015 was the light-lift Super Strypi rocket that was hoped to become a go-to vehicle for cost-effective launches of small satellites and multi-satellite missions, though the debut mission of the rocket from Kauai failed after only one minute for reasons that have yet to be uncovered.

China closed out another very successful year with a 100% success rate in its 19 orbital launches, most of which occurred in the second half of the year in a rapid launch pace. In particular, the Long March 3B rocket employed to lift heavy Geostationary Satellites, flew seven times in the last four months of the year. In 2015, China debuted the Long March 11 and Long March 6 rockets – the light-lift members of the country’s new line of rockets to be inaugurated over the coming years. Also, 2015 saw the inauguration of the Beidou-3 series of navigation satellites that will continue deployment in the years to come.

Europe’s workhorse rocket, Ariane 5, completed six flights this year, all dedicated to dual-payload launches delivering communications satellites to Geostationary Transfer Orbit with the lone exception of the MSG-4 meteorological satellite. Vega launched three times this year, starting with the launch of the Intermediate Experimental Vehicle that demonstrated new re-entry technologies. Vega successfully launched the next satellite in the Copernicus Earth Observation satellite fleet and closed its year with the launch of the LISA Pathfinder, currently on its way to the L1 Sun-Earth Lagrange Point where it will test out cutting-edge technologies for the measurement of gravitational waves.

India conducted five successful launches this year using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle for four flights and the Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle for one mission, continuing a slow build-up in launch rates, to be continued next year that has been outlined to be India’s busiest yet. In 2015, PSLV launched one of India's indigenous navigation satellites, delivered a trio of Earth Observation satellites to orbit, conducted a flight carrying six spacecraft for Singapore and lifted into orbit the AstroSat observatory for a science mission in high-energy astrophysics.

Japan can also look back at a successful year in the space launch business with three missions of the H-IIA rocket and a single flight using the larger H-IIB to deliver the HTV-5 cargo craft to orbit for a flight to the Space Station. H-IIA lifted a pair of Information Gathering Satellites and performed its first fully commercial mission when launching the Telstar 12V satellite, also debuting a modified upper stage suitable for long-coast missions to Geostationary Transfer Orbits.