Two names for one stretch of coast
Florida's 1,392 orbital launch attempts are split in GCAT between Cape Canaveral, with 1,107, and the Kennedy Space Center next door, with 282. The Space Force renamed the old Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on December 9, 2020, but the pads on both sides of the boundary are one launch coast.
The first launch on this page was a Vanguard rocket on December 6, 1957, and GCAT logs it as a failure. Of everything since, 1,314 of 1,392 succeeded. The 2025 total of 109 was a record for the coast, and SpaceX flew 101 of them, 93%.
Launches per year
Launches by month in 2025
Pads and launch complexes
The busiest pads over the last five years.
Which rockets
Rockets launched in 2024 and 2025.
Pad 39A, from Apollo to Falcon
Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy hosted the first Saturn V flight, Apollo 4, on November 9, 1967, and Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969. The last shuttle left it on July 8, 2011. SpaceX took the pad on April 14, 2014 under a 20-year exclusive lease, and flew its first launch from it on February 19, 2017.
In the pad table, 39A has 99 launches, behind the 286 from Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 40. The two Apollo flights are covered in more detail in Apollo by the numbers.
Pad 40, the workhorse
Space Launch Complex 40 began as a Titan pad. The first Titan flew on June 18, 1965 and the last on April 30, 2005. SpaceX's first Falcon 9 launch from the pad was on June 4, 2010. After the AMOS-6 accident in September 2016, the pad returned to service on December 15, 2017. In September 2024 it hosted a crewed launch for the first time, Crew-9.
It's now the busiest pad on the coast by a wide margin, with 286 of the 421 launches in the pad table. SLC-41 has 26, and LC-36 has 3.
Who else flies from here
Space Launch Complex 41 is used by United Launch Alliance for Atlas V and Vulcan, and Launch Complex 36 is leased to Blue Origin for New Glenn. The rocket table reads Falcon 9 with 236, Atlas V 551 with 10, Falcon Heavy with 5 and New Glenn with 3.
The coast's crewed history includes John Glenn's flight on February 20, 1962. The first American satellite launched from here too: Explorer 1 left Launch Complex 26A at Cape Canaveral.
New rockets on the old pads
Two new rockets have joined the coast. Vulcan, built by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, first flew on January 8, 2024 from SLC-41, carrying the Peregrine lunar lander. It replaced ULA's Atlas V and Delta IV rockets. The rocket table shows 4 Vulcan launches.
Blue Origin's New Glenn first flew on January 16, 2025 from Launch Complex 36. It reached orbit, but the first stage was lost on descent. Its second flight was on November 13, 2025, with the first stage landing on the ship Jacklyn. The rocket table lists 3 New Glenn launches, and they leave from Launch Complex 36.
How Florida compares
In 2025 Florida's 109 launches were 33% of the 329 orbital launches in the world. California had 66 and China's Jiuquan, the next busiest single site, had 33. Within the coast, Cape Canaveral had 82 and the Kennedy Space Center 27.
Of the coast's 1,392 attempts, 78 failed. The first was the Vanguard rocket in 1957, and most of the others came in the early decades, when every rocket was new.
How the pace has changed
The yearly series from 2019 to 2025 reads 16, 30, 31, 57, 72, 93, 109. In 2019 the coast saw 16 launches. By 2025 the figure was 109, a rise of 6.8 times. In the monthly table for 2025 the busiest months had 11 launches and the quietest 7.
2026 stands at 59 through October 16, 2026, against 86 at the same point in 2025. The data doesn't say why. Over the same period California is busier: see Vandenberg. The SpaceX page and the launches per year page show the whole picture.