SpaceX is increasingly reserving space on its rockets to launch its own Starlink satellites, crowding out rival space companies that have long depended on Elon Musk’s company to get their payloads into orbit.
Starlink’s share of SpaceX missions has grown year after year, rising from 54% of the Falcon 9 rocket’s manifest in 2020 to about 79% so far in 2026, according to a Reuters analysis of launch data compiled by astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell.
In recent months, at least seven spacecraft companies have been told that Falcon 9 is fully booked for all types of missions until 2028 or 2029, eight sources told Reuters. They added that the bottleneck is driven by SpaceX’s plans to transition to the new Starship rocket, designed to be fully reusable and cheaper than Falcon 9.
Starlink’s growing percentage of SpaceX launches reflects an economic reality. Analysts estimate that a single Starlink mission using Starship could bring in tens of millions of dollars more in revenue for SpaceX than launching a commercial customer’s payload to space. That calculation is based on the expected returns of adding more satellites to Starlink’s network.
The unit is critical to SpaceX’s success, accounting for 60% of its revenue last year. Even as SpaceX transitions to the Starship rocket, the company’s NASA obligations and its plans for Starlink are likely to occupy most of its launches.
SpaceX did not respond to Reuters requests for comment. The company has said it is targeting late 2026 for Starship’s first orbital mission, which will deploy a batch of SpaceX’s next-generation Starlink satellites.
Starlink, which has deployed more than 10,000 satellites, brought in $11.4 billion in revenue in 2025, while SpaceX earned $4.1 billion from its space and launch business.
“SpaceX has a scarce resource, which is their own launch capacity,” said Akhil Rao, chief economist at space industry research firm Rational Futures and a former NASA employee.
“If they were to use the same launch capacity for an external customer, then they are, in a sense, giving up the profits that they could have earned by flying their own internal satellites.”
There are well over 500 companies building spacecraft or operating satellites in space that make up US demand for rocket launches, representing some $50 billion in capital investment since 2000, BryceTech senior analyst Phil Smith said.
