Launch monster: SpaceX has lofted more satellites than everyone else in history, combined

SpaceX just notched a remarkable launch-dominance milestone. Elon Musk 's company has now lofted more spacecraft than the rest of humanity combined — and its lead is likely to grow over the coming months and years. Investor and former space-industry executive Christian Keil highlighted the achievement in a June 12 X post , which noted that SpaceX had launched 15,262 satellites as of that date. The combined total for all other companies and organizations since the dawn of the space age in 1957 was 15,138, according to Keil. Musk founded SpaceX in 2002. The company was not an instant success; its first three launches, with the homegrown Falcon 1 rocket, were failures. SpaceX finally broke through with a Falcon 1 success in 2008. A fourth straight failure probably would have been the end of the company, Musk has said. SpaceX soon moved on to the Falcon 9 rocket, which debuted in 2010 and remains the company's workhorse; it flew a whopping 165 times in 2025 . Most of those launches — nearly 75% of them, in fact — were devoted to building out Starlink , the broadband megaconstellation SpaceX has assembled in low Earth orbit (LEO). Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of objects that SpaceX has launched to date are Starlink satellites. As of June 18, the company has sent 12,318 of the internet spacecraft to LEO, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell. …