DLR Inventory of Global Emissions by Launchers 2024

The rapid growth of orbital launch activity continued in 2024, marking the fourth consecutive year of record-breaking launch rates. Since 2019, the annual number of launches has more than doubled, with total propellant mass burned increasing even more strongly. This trend underscores the need for quantitative assessments of rocket emissions and their impacts on atmospheric chemistry, ozone, and climate.

We present the DLR Inventory of Global Emissions by Launchers 2024, a global, four-dimensional dataset describing direct exhaust from all orbital launches conducted in 2024. The inventory provides spatially and vertically resolved exhaust across all affected atmospheric layers and is designed for direct use in global chemistry–climate models.

All launch systems contributing at least 0.5% of the total propellant burned in 2024 are individually reconstructed and simulated, including Ariane 62, multiple Long March variants, Falcon 9, Starship, Soyuz, and other major systems. Detailed aerodynamic, mass, and engine models capture thrust profiles, engine exhaust, staging, and mass properties for the launchers. This enables estimates of key exhaust species such as CO₂, H₂O, chlorine compounds, and black carbon. The three-dimensional exhaust profiles for the pollutants are derived from ascent and booster return trajectories that are optimized for each individual launch. Smaller systems are represented using surrogate models that preserve propellant mass and engine type.

The DLR Inventory of Global Emissions by Launchers 2024 provides a consistent basis for assessing the growing role of spaceflight emissions in the Earth system. In the coming years, as part of the S3D-BETTER project the inventory will be further improved by adding early plume and intermediate plume simulations and it will be extended to a longer timeframe. Furthermore, it will be used by the DLR Institute of Atmospheric Physics to estimate the climate and ozone impact of launch emissions.

Beyond its role within S3D-BETTER, the inventory will be made publicly available and its use by other projects and institutions is explicitly encouraged.