From a two-power duopoly, orbital launch spread to nine operating blocs and 31 sites

The reader asked: every orbital launch from 1957 to today — for each one the year, the launch site, the operating bloc, and whether the site is still active. This register holds 3,597 distinct launch attempts from Jonathan McDowell's GCAT launch log (snapshot updated 2026-08-28); the supplied rows are dated 1957–1990, one row per Launch_Tag, successes and failures alike.

Definitions. An orbital launch is one distinct orbital or deep-space launch attempt (one GCAT Launch_Tag); multiple payload objects on a single launch are deduplicated to one row. Operating bloc is a grouping of GCAT's launch-vehicle state — not necessarily the territory of the pad: SU → Soviet bloc (USSR); US → United States; European and ESA codes → Europe / ESA; others keep national groupings. Still active is judged at the canonical-site level from the current GCAT sites table: renamed families such as Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg count as active when a current continuation exists. Seven rows are lunar-surface departures (Apollo and Luna ascents) and plot at their lunar coordinates' Earth equivalents.

1957
ring = site no longer active · circle area = launches up to the shown year · hover a site for detail
Just two sites — Plesetsk (1,340 launches) and Baykonur (948) — account for 64% of all 3,597 attempts in the register. planet4589.org
The busiest single year is 1967 with 141 launch attempts; by 1990 the split was 73 Soviet, 27 US and 15 from four newer blocs. planet4589.org
New blocs arrive steadily: Europe 1965, Japan 1966, ELDO 1968, China 1970, India 1979, Israel 1988 — ending the US–Soviet duopoly of 1957–1964. planet4589.org
3,578 of 3,597 launches left sites whose canonical family is still active today; only 19 rows trace to closed sites such as China Lake and Hammaguir. planet4589.org

The complete register — all 3,597 rows

YearLaunch dateLaunch ID · missionLaunch site (pad)Operating blocStill activeSource

Data: Jonathan McDowell's GCAT machine-readable launch log (derived launchlog.tsv), snapshot updated 2026-08-28. 3,597 distinct Launch_Tag rows after deduplicating payload entries; supplied rows span 1957–1990. Counts include successful and failed orbital and deep-space attempts plus 7 lunar-surface ascents. "Still active" reflects the current GCAT sites table at the canonical-site level; 19 rows are from closed sites. Agency and raw state codes were cut from the table for space; the source file carries them.

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