Science1 publisher3 min readPublished
NewOrbit's founder puts satellite launch waits at 30 to 36 months, up from about a year
Anatolii Papulov of NewOrbit says satellite launch lead times have reached 30 to 36 months, up from about 12 a year ago. The figure is one start-up's experience, though Quilty Space analyst Caleb Henry also calls the shortage a crisis with several causes besides Falcon 9.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- SpaceX is reportedly no longer taking Falcon 9 bookings beyond 2028 as it moves to its much larger Starship rocket.
- Falcon 9 flew 165 times in 2025, the most of any rocket in the world and five times as many as every other US rocket combined.
- Russian rockets such as Soyuz handled about a fifth of global launch capacity before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a route that has since closed, Henry said.
- Amazon ordered 83 launches in 2022 for its Amazon Leo constellation, and only 14 of them have flown so far.
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Why it matters
- constraint Western operators cannot use China's expanding commercial rockets as a fallback: under US regulations, Henry said, a European-built satellite with one American component cannot fly on them.
- decision Operators who wait for Starship are betting on capacity SpaceX has reason to keep for Starlink, the business that earned $11.4bn in 2025, nearly two-thirds of company revenue.
- exposure Operators of bulkier satellites have the weakest claim on Starship, whose side-slot dispenser was designed for flat Starlink units, unless SpaceX flies a version with a conventional deployment mechanism.
The 30-to-36-month figure rests on one company's booking. "The lead times to launch right now are basically 30 to 36 months," Papulov, founder and CEO of UK firm NewOrbit, told New Scientist [2]. He put the wait a year earlier at about 12 months [1]. Taken at face value, the queue is now 2.5 to 3 times as long [2]. NewOrbit did secure a 2028 launch on an undisclosed rocket, and Papulov said the process was "very hard" [18]. "I think we got one of the few slots which were available," he said [18].
One start-up's lead time is a sample of one, and New Scientist does not report figures from other operators. The corroboration is qualitative. Caleb Henry, a senior analyst at Quilty Space, said there "absolutely is a launch crisis at the moment" [4]. He listed SpaceX's wind-down of Falcon 9 as the first of several causes [4]. New Scientist reports that the shortage could last years [21].
The capacity that has to be replaced is the non-Starlink share. Two-thirds of Falcon 9's 2025 flights carried Starlink satellites [8], leaving about 55 government and commercial launches [1]. Rocket Lab, the next closest competitor, flew 18 of its smaller Electron rockets to orbit in 2025 and has yet to launch its larger Neutron [14]. That is about a third as many flights as the non-Starlink Falcon 9 missions, on a smaller vehicle [4]. Blue Origin's New Glenn is grounded after exploding in May [15]. Europe's Ariane rockets and India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle launch only a few times a year [16].
Matt Hausman of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a former SpaceX engineer, said the crunch is "a little bit of a result of SpaceX's success" [10]. He said the company lowered launch costs by 10 times or more, making it "a lot easier for smaller players to get involved in the space industry" [11]. Falcon 9 ride-share missions, where companies split a rocket, cost as little as $3000 per kilogram [8]. Hausman said ending Falcon 9 leaves many of those smaller players without a route to space [11]. "This will definitely impact a lot of start-ups," Papulov said [3].
I think operators are right to plan for multi-year waits, with two conditions. The first is Starship. New Scientist reports that if SpaceX makes it widely available, the crisis would dissipate [20]. Starship reached orbit for the first time on 28 September [6], and it is unclear how much of its capacity SpaceX will offer commercial customers [9]. The second is the lead-time estimate itself, which comes from one founder; queue data from more operators could move it in either direction.
What to watch
- Whether SpaceX opens Starship ride-share to outside customers, and with a deployment mechanism that fits bulkier satellites.
- New Glenn's return to flight and Rocket Lab's first Neutron launch, the two nearest additions to non-SpaceX capacity.
- Ride-share prices for 2028 and later slots, to see whether scarcity is raising costs as well as waits.