Where to Find Past Rocket Launches and Annual Recaps on RocketLaunch.org

Updated

RocketLaunch.org keeps two separate archives for looking backward: a Past Launches section for individual completed missions, and an Annual Recaps section for year-by-year summaries. Both are reachable from the site's main navigation or footer. Use Past Launches when you want a specific mission; use Annual Recaps when you want launch activity for a whole year at a glance.

Finding Past Rocket Launches

The Past Launches entry is listed alongside Scheduled Launches in the site's main navigation and again in the footer under "Launch Schedules."

  • What it contains: launches that have already taken place, as opposed to the "Scheduled Launches" section, which covers upcoming and future flights.
  • How to get there: select "Past Launches" from the navigation menu or the footer link of the same name.
  • What to expect: the same launch record format used elsewhere on the site — mission name, launch status, date and time, location and pad, launch service provider, vehicle, mission type, and destination orbit. The "Recently Launched" block on the homepage previews this format; for example, the HANBIT-Nano | Flight 2 entry shows status TBD, a Sep 2026 date, Alcântara Launch Center / HANBIT Pad, provider Innospace, vehicle HANBIT-Nano, mission type Test Flight, and destination Sun-Synchronous Orbit.

If you already know the mission name, provider, or site, the site's dedicated pages — SpaceX Launches, NASA Launches, Falcon 9 Next Launches, Cape Canaveral Launches, and similar — are a faster route than scrolling the full past archive.

Finding Annual Recaps

The Annual Recaps section is the year-level view. It appears in the main navigation and in the footer under "Recaps."

The recap years named on the site are:

Recap year
Space Age Overview
2023 Launch Recap
2010 Launch Recap
2000 Launch Recap
1990 Launch Recap
1980 Launch Recap
1969 Launch Recap
2026

Two things are worth noting about this list. First, it is not a continuous year-by-year series — the recaps jump between milestone years rather than covering every year in between. Second, "Space Age Overview" sits above the individual years as a broader summary, and 2026 appears as a recap entry even though it is the current year shown elsewhere on the site.

Which Archive to Use

Goal Where to go
Look up one specific completed mission Past Launches, or a provider/site page such as SpaceX Launches or Cape Canaveral Launches
See what flew in a given year Annual Recaps, then pick the year
Get a broad historical picture rather than one year Space Age Overview
Check what is coming up instead of what already flew Scheduled Launches (the counterpart to Past Launches)

Practical Notes

  • Recaps are a fixed set, not a full index. If the year you want is not in the recap list, the Past Launches archive is the place to reconstruct it mission by mission.
  • Launch records carry a status field. Entries can show TBD rather than a confirmed date, and dates can shift — the HANBIT-Nano entries carry "Last Update" and "Updated" timestamps for exactly this reason. Treat any single record as a snapshot, not a permanent fact.
  • The site also offers a weekly email alert for upcoming launches. That is forward-looking and will not help with historical research, but it is the counterpart tool if your interest shifts from past activity to what is next.