Tonight's liftoff was the first of 2026 not just for SpaceX but for the global launch community.
It's no surprise that SpaceX is breaking in the year. Elon Musk's company launched a whopping 165 orbital missions in 2025 — far more than any other entity, either commercial or governmental. That was also a record for SpaceX, which the company may aim to break again this year.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 9:25 p.m. ET on Jan. 2 with news of successful launch, rocket landing and satellite deployment.
About 4.5 minutes later, the Falcon 9's second stage deployed the payload — a COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation satellite — into low Earth orbit for the Italian Space Agency and the Italian Ministry of Defense.
COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation is a
small network designed to "monitor the Earth for the sake of emergency
prevention, strategy, scientific and commercial purposes, providing data
on a global scale to support a variety of applications," -------according to a European Space Agency explainer.
Among
those applications are
- "risk management,
- cartography,
- forest & environment protection,
- natural resources exploration,
- land management,
- defense and security,
- maritime surveillance,
- food & agriculture management," ___________________the explainer adds.
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