Rocket Lab and SpaceX complete launches
In the past two days both Rocket Lab and SpaceX successfully completed launches.
I am reporting the Rocket Lab launch two days late because it was unannounced and remains officially unconfirmed by the company two days after lift-off. [UPDATE: Rocket Lab finally confirmed the launch on June 22, 2026.] According to two different launch tracking websites (here and here), the company’s Electron rocket lifted off successfully from one of its two New Zealand launchpads on June 19, 2026, placing a Rocket Lab payload into orbit dubbed Puma, a Space Force satellite designed to rendezvous with a target spacecraft dubbed Jackel that was built by the company True Anomaly and launched on an earlier SpaceX launch.
The mission secrecy was also for a second purpose, as outlined by Rocket Lab:
The $32 million contract includes a Rocket Lab spacecraft, configured for the unique requirements of the VICTUS HAZE mission, that will launch on Electron within just 24 hours’ notice. The mission is designed to improve Tactically Responsive Space (TacRS) processes and timelines to demonstrate the SSC’s ability to respond to on-orbit threats on very short timelines.
SpaceX then followed up today with a launch of 24 more Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage (B1063) completed its 33rd flight (70 days after its previous mission), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. With this flight this booster moved into a tie with the space shuttle Atlantis for fourth place in the rankings for the most reused launch vehicle:
39 Discovery space shuttle
35 Falcon 9 booster B1067
34 Falcon 9 booster B1071
33 Atlantis space shuttle
33 Falcon 9 booster B1063
31 Falcon 9 booster B1069
29 Falcon 9 booster B1077
28 Columbia space shuttle
28 Falcon 9 booster B1078
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
74 SpaceX
40 China
9 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia
For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 74 to 69.
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We expect SpaceX to have more launches than Russia, but now Rocket Lab has passed Russia too. Who in the 1990a would have imagined that not one, but two commercial companies would eventually been outlaunching the Russians. Not me, and I worked in the apace industry during that time.
Seawriter: I have been predicting this for decades. See for example the last chapter of my 1998 book Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8.
”Who in the 1990[s] would have imagined that not one, but two commercial companies would eventually been outlaunching the Russians[?]”
Probably most of us working in the aerospace industry, but we would have assumed at the time that the companies would be Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
mkent: My experience with the aerospace industry in the 1990s was quite different. Across the board, I was greeted with ridicule when I and others (David Livingston and Alan Wasser come to mind) suggested the private sector would eventually dominate, with government becoming a backwater.
In fact, I reported in detail how Boeing and Lockheed Martin were completely uninterested in competing and innovating, and were actually quite willing to take the government dole as a partnership of limited capabilities.
For a while, in the 1990s, we had high hopes of a private, commercial space launch industry.
Small payloads were occasionally launched on Pegasus, and the innovative DC-X Delta Clipper and X-33 VentureStar test vehicles were under development. Delta Clipper even did some test hops. They had started as proposed commercial launch vehicles, but we were disappointed that they both stopped development when the NASA money stopped rolling in.
There were other commercial possibilities, and the X-Prize gave us hope, optimism, and enthusiasm. The X-Prize did end with reusables: Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and Blue Origin’s New Shepard (which was too late to really be a competitor for the prize).
So, yeah, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, McDonell Douglas, and Northrup Grumman were not going to be the heroes of the space industry or of the space enthusiasts. Some of us did not know that, at the time, hoping that there were still entrepreneurial aspirations within those companies.
Back in the 1990s the only alternatives were not getting the funding that they needed. The thought of competing with NASA was discouraging investors. Even in the mid 2000s, after NASA changed its philosophy to hire competitive commercial space companies for space launch, investors were cautious.
No wonder it took billionaires and hundred-millionaires to found the successful launch companies.
What’s interesting to me is how the pace of launches has risen this year, I dont remember SpaceX’s lead being so narrow ar this point in time last year. But maybe I misremember.
For some odd reason I love that they have outlaunched the entire world collectively. I’m hoping they get more competition and that the overall launch rate increases 10x
The Rocket Lab mission wsa very hush hush, and it was difficult finding information about it.
RL just conformed it about an hour ago.
https://x.com/RocketLab/status/2069157322266759289
Apologies for my fat fingers on my tiny phone key pad.