First Quarter 2018 Launch Report: China & USA Battle for Lead

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

The world’s launch providers have been extremely busy in the first quarter of 2018, with 31 orbital launches thus far. This is more than one third of the 90 launches conducted last year.

China leads the pack with 10 successful launches. The United States is close behind with a total of nine launches with one failure. The tenth American launch is scheduled for Monday afternoon from Florida.

Russia — the traditional leader in launches — is in third place with five flights, followed by Japan with three, India with two, and Europe and New Zealand with one apiece. (A Soyuz launch from Kourou is included under Russian launches).

The one failure this year occurred in January when a SpaceX Falcon 9 launched a secret military payload code named Zuma. Although there is some uncertainty about the fate of the satellite, the bulk of the information that has become public indicates the payload failed to separate from the second stage and burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

SpaceX says that Falcon 9 performed as planned. That would leave responsibility on Northrop Grumman, which supplied the satellite and the payload adapter that connected it to the booster. Northrop Grumman has not commented for the record on the classified mission.

The other launch mishap involved an Ariane 5 rocket that placed two satellites in the wrong orbits in January. The partial failure was blamed on a programming error that sent the booster off course. The satellites were able to reach their intended orbits using onboard propulsion.

Launches by Booster

China’s Long March 2 family and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets each flew five times during the first three months of 2018. Russia launched different variants of its venerable Soyuz booster four times, with China’s Long March 3B flying three times and United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Atlas V launching twice.

The highlight of the first quarter was SpaceX’s maiden launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket in February. The rocket, which is composed of three Falcon 9 first stages with 27 engines, launched a Tesla Roadster with a mannequin dressed in a spacesuit into deep space.

SpaceX also reached a milestone with its 50th Falcon 9 launch on March 6 by orbiting the Hispasat 30W-6 communications satellite.

Rocket Lab successfully flew its Electron booster for the first time in January from New Zealand. The inaugural launch of the small-satellite rocket failed in June 2017.

Japan successfully launched the SS-520 rocket with a CubeSat aboard in February.  The maiden launch of the microsat launcher had failed the previous year.

SpaceX is attempting to launch Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters around 30 times this year. The total would be significant increase over the 18 launches the company conducted in 2017. Additional launches planned by ULA, Orbital ATK and other companies could boost the American total above 40.

China is also looking to launch more than 40 times this year. The Chinese government has 36 launches on the manifest, with a number of private companies planning launches as well.

Launches by Primary Payloads

The 31 launches carried a total of 54 primary payloads and dozens of smaller secondary ones into space. Eleven launches had military spacecraft aboard, with eight flights carrying Earth observation payloads and six others with civilian communications satellites. China launched six Beidou navigation satellites aboard three rockets.  

Other significant payloads launched this year included:

• Russian ISS Progress resupply and Soyuz crew flights;

• American GOES-S weather satellite;

• two prototypes for SpaceX’s Starlink global broadband satellite network;

• Tesla Roadster, which became the first terrestrial car in outer space; and,

• Chinese Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite (CSES), which is studying the studying the correlation between atmospheric events and seismic activities.

Launches by Spaceport

America’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was the busiest spaceport during the first quarter with five launches. Florida hosted six launches when you add in the Falcon Heavy flight from the adjoining Kennedy Space Center. The other three U.S. launches flew from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

China conducted four launches apiece from its Jiuquan and Xichang launch centers. The nation’s two other launches lifted off from the Taiyuan spaceport.

The Baikonur Cosmodrome has hosted only two launches thus far, a small number for a spaceport that has traditionally led the world in flights. Russia has conducted one flight apiece from Plesetsk, Vostochny and the European spaceport in Kourou.

India’s Satish Dhwan, Japan’s Uchinoura and Europe’s Kourou spaceports hosted two launches apiece during the first quarter. Japan’s Tanegashima and New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula each saw one launch each.

Space Station Support Flights

There were two support missions flown to the International Space Station during the first quarter. The first was a Russian Progress resupply mission launched in February, the second a crew flight in March.

SpaceX is set to launch a Dragon cargo ship to ISS on Monday afternoon aboard a Falcon 9 booster.

Suborbital Launches

There have been six civilian suborbital launches thus far this year.

Four missions were launched from the Poker Flats range in Alaska in January, with two others conducted from Wallops Island in Virginia. The ASPIRE flight at the end of March tested a supersonic parachute that will be used on the Mars 2020 mission.