After the US–Soviet duel, launch cadence collapsed — then the US and China pushed it to a record 323 attempts in 2025
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 ledger holds 7,341 orbital launch attempts — successes and confirmed failures — from Sputnik on 4 October 1957 through 30 August 2026, drawn from Jonathan McDowell's GCAT launch files. Each attempt carries its year, launch site, an inferred operating bloc, and whether the site still operates; 2026 is year-to-date.
Launch attempts per year by operating bloc
Where the world launches from — 47 sites, 43 still active
site still activesite retiredcircle area = total attempts from site
The Soviet Union alone accounts for 2,363 attempts — nearly a third of all history — yet its bloc ended in 1991; Russia added 1,014 more since. planet4589.org
2025 set the all-time record with 323 attempts, ahead of the Cold War peak of 139 in 1967; the United States (177) and China (91) drove it. planet4589.org
Four sites carry over half the ledger: Plesetsk (1,684), Baykonur (1,553), Cape Canaveral (1,104) and Vandenberg (921) — all four still active. planet4589.org
2026 year-to-date (through 30 August) already logs 205 attempts — 112 American and 60 Chinese. planet4589.org
Read the labels carefully. “Operating bloc” is an analytical grouping inferred primarily from the GCAT launch-agency code, with the site's state code as fallback — not a formal GCAT field; some multinational and commercial cases are debatable. “Site still active” means the unified site has at least one GCAT site phase with a blank, “-” or “*” TStop — GCAT's marker for still operating or assumed so; it describes the site overall, not a specific pad or continuing orbital capability. Air and sea launches use GCAT's generalized launch-origin model.
The full ledger — all 7,341 attempts
Year
Date
Launch ID
Mission
Site
Agency
Bloc
Site active
Source
Data: GCAT (J. McDowell, planet4589.org), Release 1.8.7, launch files O.tsv (orbital launches) and F.tsv (orbital launch failures), data through 2026-08-30; assembled 2026-09-02. 7,341 rows, one per launch attempt; counts are attempts, not successful launches. Operating bloc is inferred from agency code with site state as fallback. Coordinates shown for the 47 unified sites. The table pages 25 rows at a time; every row remains reachable via paging, search and filters.