Starlink’s Crazy Launch Rate in Four Charts
Credit: Quilty Space
No satellite operator has transformed the status quo quite like SpaceX. When the company began launching the Starlink constellation in 2019, there were roughly 2,000 satellites in space from all of humanity – every country, company, university and laboratory combined. SpaceX is now launching around 2,000 Starlink satellites every 12 months, and may exceed that rate in 2025.
Looking back at the 8,000 Starlink satellites SpaceX has launched (inclusive of one failure) provides a means of analyzing the pace of Starlink’s deployment. Per Quilty research, after the first 2,000 Starlinks – which were slower to launch due to teething production challenges and the covid-19 pandemic – SpaceX has added 1,000 new satellites roughly every six months.
The company has maintained this deployment rate even while introducing newer, larger satellite iterations that resulted in fewer spacecraft fitting on each Falcon 9 rocket. While the number of satellites trended down (from 60 initially to 22), SpaceX’s overall launch rate kept increasing.
SpaceX’s dramatic increase in launch cadence enabled the company to start deploying a second LEO constellation – the Starlink Direct-to-Cell constellation – with minimal impact on the core broadband fleet. SpaceX began regular launches of Starlink DTC satellites 12 months ago in May 2024, and has averaged slightly under 300 DTC satellites launched alongside every 1,000 broadband satellites.
SpaceX’s introduction of DTC modestly slowed broadband deployment – it took eight months to launch 1,000 broadband satellites from March to November 2024, the longest in more than two years – but the company is once again accelerating its launch rate. Introduced in 2024, the “Optimized” V2 Mini reduced mass 22%, enabling 29 broadband satellites per rocket versus 23 previously. By early 2025, SpaceX began conducting more Falcon 9 launches solely with the V2 Mini Optimized.
The optimized V2 Mini will likely be the last generation of satellites to fly on the Falcon 9 before SpaceX shifts over to the V3 satellite, which was designed to launch on Starship. But even without Starship, SpaceX has proven that it can launch a world’s worth of satellites in a single year, with room to spare.
Source: https://spaceflightnow.com/2025/05/16/live-coverage-spacex-plans-morning-launch-of-starlink-satellites-from-california/