Orbital launches quadrupled in a decade — 7,378 attempts since Sputnik, and 2025 alone holds 329

Asked:
“Every orbital launch from 1957 to today — for each one list the year, the launch site, the operating bloc and whether the site is still active.”

This register lists all 7,378 distinct Earth-orbital or deep-space launch attempts recorded from 1957 through 2026 — successes, partial failures and failures alike — across 65 launch sites and 20 operating blocs, current through GCAT's 2026-09-10 update. Suborbital, missile, atmospheric and pad-test events are excluded.

Single-sourced at the row level: every detailed row comes from one GCAT launch-log file (planet4589.org, release 1.8.5); orbitalradar.com only corroborates decade-level coverage and totals. "Site still active" is a recency proxy — Yes means an orbital attempt at that site in 2024–2026; No recent orbital launch recorded is not proof of formal closure. Sites appear as GCAT codes because the source log supplies codes, not expanded names.

Annual launch attempts by operating bloc, 1957–2026

Site activity by year — top 20 sites of 65

Each cell is one site-year; darker means more launches. Rows are ordered by total launches. Hover a cell for the exact count. The remaining 45 sites are in the table below.

site label black: recent orbital launch in 2024–2026site label grey: no recent orbital launch recorded
2025 is the busiest year on record with 329 attempts — more than the 262 of 2024 and over four times the 76 of 2015. planet4589.org
Cape Canaveral (CC) is the only site active in every era: 1,102 launches from 1957 to 2026 without a break in the register. planet4589.org
The single busiest site, NIIP-53 (Plesetsk under its Soviet designation), logged 1,414 launches between 1966 and 1992 yet shows no orbital attempt in 2024–2026 under that code. planet4589.org
Only 33 of the 65 sites in the register have an orbital attempt in 2024–2026; the US (2,457) and Soviet Union (2,449) blocs are nearly tied all-time, with China (796) and post-1991 Russia (896) next. orbitalradar.com

The full register — all 7,378 launches

Method: 7,378 rows, one per distinct GCAT launch ID, from the GCAT derived launch log (planet4589.org, release 1.8.5, updated 2026-09-10), corroborated at decade level by orbitalradar.com; report dated 2026-09-12. Each row counts one Earth-orbital or deep-space launch attempt (launch codes OS success, OF failure, OP partial); suborbital and test events excluded. "Site active" = orbital attempt recorded at that site in 2024–2026, a recency proxy, not formal status. Heatmap shows the top 20 of 65 site codes; all rows appear in the table. Operating bloc is the GCAT LVState code of the launch agency, not the payload owner.

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