Euroconsult: Record amount of smaller launches
November 12, 2020
By Chris Forrester
Euroconsult’s Alexandre Najjar, a senior consultant with the research firm, speaking at its World Satellite Business Week virtual event, said that between January 1st and November 1st this year it had recorded 1029 smaller satellite launches. Adding in larger craft and the total rose to 1079. This is a record and beat the 2019 total of 385 smaller satellites launched in the whole of 2019.
Elon Musk’s Starlink system were responsible for 773 of those launches and there was still two months to go to year end.
“It was a record year despite Covid,” said Najjar. “For the first time, we launched over 1,000 satellites.”
He explained that some satellites were omitted from the list, notably a cluster of 10 craft launched by India on November 5th, and about a dozen launched from China on November 6th.