SpaceX Launched Monday. It Goes Again Tuesday.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company’s Dragon spacecraft is launched earlier this year in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (Joel Kowsky / NASA / Getty Images)

Key Points

• SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket over 150 times in 2025, an increase from 134 launches in 2024.
• Falcon 9 accounted for approximately 53% of global orbital launches in 2025, up 2 percentage points year over year.
• Starship, designed for full reusability and greater capacity, launched five times in 2025 for testing purposes.

SpaceX created the modern space industry. A number of new competitors have popped up in the process, but Elon Musk’s rocket company isn’t giving up much of its lead.

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying Starlink satellites on Monday. Starlink is SpaceX’s space-based broadband product, with more than 9,000 satellites in orbit serving in excess of 8 million customers. On Tuesday, SpaceX is planning to launch another Falcon 9 rocket with more Starlink satellites.

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The pace of SpaceX launches is something to behold. It has launched the Falcon 9 rocket more than 150 times so far in 2025. That’s up from 134 launches in 2024. Falcon 9 launched 24 times in 2020.

Falcon 9 has accounted for about 53% of global orbital launches in 2025. That share is up about 2 percentage points year over year.

It’s an impressive record. Eventually, SpaceX wants to extend its lead with Starship, the largest rocket system ever built. It launched Starship five times in 2025. Those have all been tests.

Starship is designed to be fully reusable, recovering the upper and lower stages of the rocket. Right now, SpaceX only reuses the booster stage of the Falcon 9 rocket. Reusability reduces costs. So does capacity. Starship could carry 100 to 150 metric tons to low Earth orbit. Falcon 9 carries about 23 metric tons.

Investors and space enthusiasts can always watch SpaceX launches on the company’s website.

Even if competitors like Rocket Lab USA or Firefly Aerospace don’t catch SpaceX, its progress helps the entire industry. SpaceX has created the capacity to get things to space and developed profitable applications that have attracted investors, with the ability to seed additional startups.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com