SpaceX has spent a new symbolic milestone this weekend, with the deployment of a new batch of web starlink satellites which consolidates its hegemony even more on the low terrestrial orbit.
Saturday, September 13, a Falcon 9 launcher started since the US Space Force base in Vandenberg, California, with 24 Starlink satellites on board. It was the 300ᵉ mission of this type since 2019.
Falcon 9, the inexhaustible reference
This figure perfectly illustrates the incredible rate of launch of the company. Thanks to its Falcon 9, this partially reusable launcher which has established itself as the most productive beast of the industry, SpaceX had already launched around 70 % of the world rockets in 2024.
It seems to be part to continue this momentum, in particular thanks to its progress in the field of reuse. The booster used during this 300ᵉ launch, registered B1071, was already at its 28ᵉ vol – Two less than the record set last month.
Beyond the remarkable performance of Falcon 9, this figure is also representative of the hellish growth of the Starlink Constellation. To date, around 8,400 of these devices are active in low terrestrial orbit – an incredible figure, simply without equivalent in the history of aerospace.
No sharing domination
For reference, out of the first 60 years of the space era (between 1957 and 2017), around 8,000 satellites were launched in total. This means that in her alone, SpaceX has launched more satellites in six years than the rest of the planet in half a century. According to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer who is one of the world references in the monitoring of space objects, there is just under 12,000 active satellites in low terrestrial orbit at the moment.
In 2025, the Starlink constellation therefore represents more than two thirds of all active satellites in this area. And its main competitors are still very far behind. The Eutelsat Oneweb Constellation, the second major player at present, has 634. The Kuiper project of Amazon, which was initially positioned as a major competitor at Starlink, is still in its infancy, with a small hundred devices deployed for the moment.
In the medium and long term, it is in China that competition should be the most important. The country of Xi Jinping indeed plans to deploy several megaconstellations such as Guowang, Qianfan / G60, and Honghu-3 which should all exceed 10,000 units. But these projects will not arrive at maturity for several years, and only a few dozen machines have been deployed to date.
In other words, Elon Musk’s company is redefining the space landscape as no entity has done so before; For the moment, no one seems able to compete with the hellish cadence and the operational control of SpaceX.
We therefore make you an appointment in a few years to see how this balance of power will evolve … and how the industry will manage the consequences of this race for space, starting with the problem of saturation of the orbit which has already worried NASA for several years.
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