Summary of Launches
In total, sixty nine orbital launches were made in 2008, with sixty seven reaching orbit, and two outright failures if the Iranian launch in August is counted. This is an increase of one orbital launch attempt on 2007, with two more launches reaching orbit, which continues a trend of increasing launch rates seen since 2006. The final launch of the year was conducted on 25 December, by a Proton-M with three GLONASS navigation satellites for the Russian government.
Suborbital spaceflight in 2008 saw a number of sounding rocket and missile launches. On 21 February, a RIM-161 Standard Missile 3 was used as an anti-satellite weapon to destroy the USA-193 satellite. USA-193 was a US spy satellite which had failed immediately after launch in 2006.
Read more about this topic: 2008 In Spaceflight
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