Floating launch vehicle operations platform

A floating launch vehicle operations platform is a marine vessel used for launch or landing operations of an orbital launch vehicle by a launch service provider: putting satellites into orbit around Earth or another celestial body, or recovering first-stage boosters from orbital-class flights by making a propulsive landing on the platform.

In the early decades of spaceflight technology, all orbital launch vehicle operations were exclusively from land, and all booster stages were expended after a single use for nearly 60 years after the first orbital spaceflight, Sputnik 1. After the late 1990s and into the 2010s, new marine options for launch were built. Landing of orbital-class boosters began to be accomplished in 2015. More platforms, both for launch and landing, are currently in construction or planned.

Suborbital rockets and ballistic missiles had been launched from marine platforms earlier than the 1990s, but are not the topic of this article.

Both floating launch platform and floating landing platforms have been placed into use by orbital launch service providers as of 2020. Additionally, at least two new rocket landing platforms and one new launch platform are under construction as of 2020.

There are currently at least five instances of marine launch or landing platforms for orbital launch vehicles:

In addition to the historical and current platforms, other entities have considered utilizing a floating landing platform.

Orbital launch platforms were initially^[when?] modified ships,^{[citation needed]} but specific platforms were later produced specifically to be orbital launch vessels.

The concept was pioneered in the late 1990s by a US, Russian, Norwegian and Ukrainian commercial consortium. The Chinese space agency did their first orbital launch from a ship in 2019. It was unclear if the shipboard launch was a special demonstration mission, or if China was putting a new launch service provider capability into place.