Credit: SpaceX/Rocket Lab/Galactic Energy

The year 2023 was another very successful year for a lot of private space companies. For example, the American space company SpaceX launched 90 Falcon 9 rockets for the first time, and several Chinese space companies also launched new commercial rockets. Hundreds of SpaceX's Starlink satellites were successfully launched into low Earth orbit by Falcon 9 rockets, and thanks to private space companies such as Rocket Lab and SpaceX, dozens of small CubeSats were also launched into space for private companies, scientific organisations and gouvernments. In terms of space tourism, 2023 was also a successful year. Virgin Galactic conducted seven suborbital spaceflights with its SpaceShipTwo spacecraft and Blue Origin conducted a successful unmanned suborbital spaceflight with its New Shepard space capsule.

Total launches by commercial space company (manned & unmanned)

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Kris Christiaens

This article was published by FutureSpaceFlight founder and chief editor Kris Christiaens. Kris Christiaens has been passionate and fascinated by spaceflight and space exploration all his life and has written hundreds of articles on space projects, the commercial space industry and space missions over the past 20 years for magazines, books and websites. In late 2021, he founded the website FutureSpaceFlight with the goal of promoting new space companies and commercial space projects and compiling news of these start-ups and companies on one website.