Space · Lift Capability
Annual Mass to Orbit
Mass launched each year multiplied eightfold in seven years, mostly Starlink.
- 389 t (2018) → 3,193 t (2025), ×8
- Total mass beats counting rockets or sats
- SpaceX now lifts more than everyone else
- GCAT revises later: 2024 now near 2,626 t
Total mass delivered to orbit in a year is the truest measure of launch capability, better than counting rockets or satellites, because thousands of tiny smallsats or a single heavy launch can each distort those counts. Through the mid-2010s the figure sat in the low hundreds of tonnes a year, dominated by government programmes. Then reusable Falcon 9 uncorked it: from about 389 tonnes in 2018 to 3,193 in 2025, a factor of roughly eight in seven years, with SpaceX now lifting more mass than every other operator on Earth combined, most of it its own Starlink satellites. Every point here is the payload-mass-launched total from Jonathan McDowell’s annual GCAT reports, read from the reports themselves: 338 t in 2016, then 392, 389, 384, 565, 790, 1,029, 1,479, 2,541 and 3,193 through 2025. McDowell prints the figure as a mass column inside the payloads-by-owner table in the 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2020 reports, and as a standalone mass table for 2018 and from 2021 on, which is why those four years are given to the whole tonne. Each point is the number its own report published, and GCAT’s catalogue keeps being re-estimated afterwards: McDowell’s continuously regenerated tally now puts 2024 nearer 2,626 t rather than the 2,541 t his 2024 report printed.
| Year | Value | Note | Projected |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 338 tonnes | ||
| 2017 | 392 tonnes | ||
| 2018 | 388.8 tonnes | Reusable Falcon 9 era begins | |
| 2019 | 384 tonnes | ||
| 2020 | 565 tonnes | ||
| 2021 | 790 tonnes | ||
| 2022 | 1,029.2 tonnes | ||
| 2023 | 1,478.9 tonnes | ||
| 2024 | 2,541.1 tonnes | ||
| 2025 | 3,193.4 tonnes | 3,193 t, SpaceX ~80% (McDowell) |