Terminal Count: 2024 spaceflight in review

It has been a busy year full of rocket launches, broken records, and new developments. While years past have been about the possibilities of what is to come, 2024 was about seeing those renderings come to life. Here are our top developments stories from 2024.

This week’s launches

• December 30 (Monday)
  • ISRO | PSLV | SPADEX | 11:28 A.M. ET
    • First Launch Pad, Satish Dhawan Space Centre, India
• December 31 (Tuesday)
  • SpaceX | Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 12-6 | 12:34 A.M. ET
    • LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
• January 2 (Thursday)
  • SpaceX | Falcon 9 | Thuraya 4-NGS | 12:00 A.M. ET
    • SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida

The last year of Starship development?

After environmental reviews, infrastructure development, and FAA approval, SpaceX was able to double the number of Starship launches in 2024 compared to 2023. SpaceX was also able to accomplish what many thought was only a dream of Elon Musk: catching the booster with the launch tower.

From Flight 3 to Flight 6, Starship has moved from a vehicle in development to more of a vehicle in testing. No longer can you doubt that Starship can be successful; it’s now just a matter of learning how to fly it.

All four flights by Starship in 2024 were suborbital, and that will likely continue for a few more flights. A major roadblock that SpaceX has had to figure out was surviving reentry. If Starship’s Ship can’t make it back to land, first, that makes for a really bad fully reusable rocket, but second, it would be hard for any governing body to allow it to fly over land.

It seems like SpaceX has made great progress remedying this issue, leading us to believe that in 2025, Starship will make it to orbit and maybe even deliver an operational payload to space as well.

ULA doesn’t get Vulcan certified

The second year-long story in spaceflight was ULA‘s attempt to get Vulcan certified to fly national security missions for the US Space Force. Not without trying, however, as it flew both of its certification flights in 2024. The Space Force is expecting to certify the rocket in early 2025, but that means ULA won’t meet its goal to fly two NSSL missions by the year’s end.

While ULA has done an excellent job at commercializing its launch manifest, with nearly 40 Amazon Kuiper launches on order, it is still focused on getting launch contracts from the US Government. However, its market share has continued to decrease due to stiff competition from SpaceX. It will likely decrease even more when Blue Origin gets its New Glenn rocket online in the weeks to come.

ULA’s CEO, Tory Bruno, has discussed using Vulcan’s second stage, Centaur, as an in-space interceptor for the Space Force. Some analysts have viewed this as a dying last act of a former monopoly. Only time will tell if ULA survives the wave of “new space” companies eating away at its market share.

ULA could get new life breathed into it if the rumored sale of it still has teeth. With Boeing attempting to scale back its space operations, its 50% stake in the joint venture with Lockheed Martin could be on the chopping block someday. Potential sales to private equity, Blue Origin, or other defense contractors came and went this year with no real action.

Either ULA continues on as a fraction of its former domination over the market or crumbles under the pressure of SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other reusable options.

Blue Origin just misses end of year New Glenn debut

Blue Origin came out at the start of this year with one major goal: get New Glenn launched. While it also saw more New Shepard flights and progress on its lunar lander and space station projects, it really needed to start delivering on its launch contracts.

We began seeing flight hardware emerge from the company’s rocket factory in Florida. They made their way to LC-36, a revamped launch complex that commands the Space Coast’s skyline.

Blue Origin was confident that it could debut its rocket with a payload from NASA in time to meet the transfer window to Mars. NASA seemingly had its doubts and decided to delay the mission until the next year, leaving Blue Origin without a payload. Those doubts proved correct as Blue Origin missed that milestone by months.

Now pivoting to a demonstration flight of its future Blue Ring satellite bus, it has set a goal for a launch by the end of the year.

Even with numerous stage tests and the rollout of its rocket’s flight hardware rocket stages, Blue Origin seemingly ran into a similar issue that SpaceX encountered earlier in the year: FAA approval. So while it did not get approval in time to meet the end-of-year goal, it did hit the milestone of gaining a Part 450 launch license and static fire of its New Glenn booster before New Year’s.

While Blue Origin hasn’t publicly announced a launch date yet, January 6 seems to have been picked as a placeholder mission for airspace restrictions, with a backup date set for January 7.

SpaceX continues to shatter records

By the end of the day tomorrow, SpaceX will have launched 138 rockets, four of those being from Starship. The Falcon 9, SpaceX’s workhorse rocket, launched 131 of those, far higher than last year’s record year of 91. SpaceX was also the number one launcher in the world by both the number of missions and payload.

That wasn’t the only record it broke; its turnaround times lowered dramatically. From being able to launch the same booster every few months to now just two weeks, the knowledge gained by reflying Falcon 9s will directly translate to being able to launch multiple Starship boosters a day.

Finally, turnaround dates for launch pads, while probably not a record, were also crazy fast. SLC-40, SpaceX’s most preferred launch pad, would regularly see two to three launches a week. Another useful piece of data for having a rapidly reusable launch pad for Starship.

We should expect much more of the same in 2025 as SpaceX continues to increase its launch cadence, both due to the need for more Starlink satellites and an ever-growing commercial market.

Signs of life of a European launch market

While ULA has been hit hard by SpaceX’s rise to dominance, no one has been hit harder than Arianespace. Its vehicles, both way more expensive and not as reliable as SpaceX’s, have even been passed over by its own space agency. Its recent CEO change could spark a new mission to truly compete, but it is likely decades behind schedule.

However, other European companies have begun to show some promise that the continent might have a future in the commercial launch market.

From Spain, PLD Space is expanding its work on its launch site in French Guiana and plans to be orbital hopefully by 2026. It also just recently announced its plans for a larger rocket and a human spaceflight program. Two things needed if there is to be any launch competition against Arianespace.

In Germany, Rocket Factory Augsburg was able to get its first rocket to the launch pad. While this sadly ended in an anomaly and loss of the rocket, no new launch company can get away at the start without setbacks. The fact that it has gotten this far in an extremely rocky funding climate is a cause for celebration.

Finally, Avio gained complete control over its Vega rocket family. Since its creation, the Vega rocket was marketed, sold, and operated by Arianespace, but that is now all to be handled by its maker, Avio. Another win in breaking up Arianespace’s control over the market, building chances for competition.

This is all followed by ESA‘s commitment to building a home launch market and human spaceflight capabilities, and it has backed this with more funding to several companies to help make it a reality. It recently just seeded more funding to its reusable rocket development program.

While 2025 won’t be a breakout year for Europe’s launch plans, it will likely be another step in the right direction to build on what it has done in the past.