The business of sending humans into space has not yet risen to the levels seen during the space shuttle program, but 2024 could see the most U.S.-based orbital launches in 15 years.

There are seven missions slated from either Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral Space Force Station that look to place 26 humans into orbit. It's the highest number of crew launching from the Space Coast since 2009. That year saw five shuttle launches with 35 humans on board.

The seven planned launches would also be the most since the eight space shuttle launches in 1997.

The shuttle era finished with only three launches in 2010 and 2011 before its retirement, and U.S.-based launches did not happen again until the successful May 2020 liftoff of SpaceX's Demo-2 mission flying the Crew Dragon Endeavour to the International Space Station with humans on board for the first time.

Since then, SpaceX has been the only orbital U.S.-based launcher of humans in the game, mixing up a combination of missions under NASA's Commercial Crew Program to the ISS as well as private missions to both the station and standalone orbital flights.

A little more than a year ago, a NASA flight test article came screaming back from space at more than 18,000 mph, reaching temperatures of nearly 2,700°F before gently splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. At that moment, it became the largest blunt body—a type of reentry vehicle that creates a heat-deflecting shockwave—ever to reenter Earth's atmosphere.

The Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID) launched on Nov. 10, 2022, aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket and successfully demonstrated an inflatable heat shield. Also known as a Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) aeroshell, this technology could allow larger spacecraft to safely descend through the atmospheres of celestial bodies like Mars, Venus, and even Saturn's moon, Titan.

On 17 November 2023, ESA's Juice spacecraft carried out one of the largest and most important maneuvers in its eight-year journey to Jupiter.

Using its main engine, Juice changed its orbit around the sun to put itself on the correct trajectory for next summer's Earth–moon double gravity assist—the first of its kind.

The maneuver lasted 43 minutes and burned almost 10% of the spacecraft's entire fuel reserve. It's the first part of a two-part maneuver that could mark the final time that Juice's main engine is used until its arrival in the Jupiter system in 2031.