A Triumphant Year for SpaceX

The year 2017 has turned out to be a good one for rocket science in the United States. American companies made 29 successful rocket launches into orbit, the highest figure since 1999, which saw 31 launches, according to a comprehensive database maintained by Gunter Krebs, a spaceflight historian in Germany. The final launch of the year, by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a cache of commercial communications satellites, took place Friday night at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. More

(Source: The Atlantic - Dec 27)