Space Coast Rockets to New Record
May 1, 2026 – From FLORIDA TODAY: Five different types of orbital rockets launched from Florida’s Space Coast during the same month — toppling Cape Canaveral’s six-decade-old record dating to the days of NASA’s Gemini and Apollo programs.
During April, the Cape hosted launches by NASA, United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin, in addition to its usual heavy dose of SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. Then SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy liftoff on April 29 — the first since October 2024 — pushed the monthly total to a record-breaking five rocket varieties.
A quick rundown of April’s unprecedented assortment of rockets that launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA’s neighboring Kennedy Space Center.
- April 1: NASA’s hulking Space Launch System propelled the four Artemis II astronauts on their 10-day journey around the moon and back.
- April 2: A SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted 29 Starlink broadband satellites into low-Earth orbit.
- April 4: A ULA Atlas V sporting five solid-rocket boosters launched 29 Amazon Leo satellites into low-Earth orbit.
- April 19: Blue Origin’s third-ever New Glenn heavy-lift rocket lifted off, but failed to properly deploy AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite.
- April 29: SpaceX’s triple-core Falcon Heavy roared off the pad and lifted a Viasat broadband satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit.
Florida’s Space Coast has hosted 31 orbital rocket launches thus far this year. That cadence stacks up short of 2025’s final total of 109 launches — an all-time record.
Source: FLORIDA TODAY
