Suborbital

A flight that reaches space but not the speed needed to stay there, so it arcs up and comes straight back down.

Why it matters

The distinction is about speed, not altitude. Reaching 100 km takes a fraction of the energy needed to enter orbit, which is why suborbital flight is far cheaper and why it is where test flights, brief microgravity experiments and space tourism live. It is also how new vehicles prove their hardware before committing to an orbital attempt - a suborbital test can validate engines, staging and re-entry without the cost or the consequences of a full orbital mission.

In our data

Our tracker logs 7 suborbital missions out of 350, and the list is instructive: it mixes vehicle demonstration flights from new entrants with abort tests for crewed programmes. Almost none of them carry a paying payload - they exist to prove that the vehicle works.

Missions we track

2026-07-24 Starship | Flight 13 Launch Successful
2026-05-22 Starship | Flight 12 Launch Successful
2026-04-30 Soyuz-5 | Demo Flight Launch Successful

Where we use it

Not to be confused with

An orbital launch that fails to reach orbit, which ends up on a suborbital trajectory by accident rather than by design - the outcome looks similar and the intent is opposite.