[3][4] The permanent crew of the International Space Station increased from three to six in May, and in the last few months of the year, Japan's first resupply mission to the outpost, HTV-1, was conducted successfully.

At 16:56 GMT on 10 February, the first major collision between two satellites in orbit occurred, resulting in the destruction of Kosmos 2251 and Iridium 33, launched in 1993 and 1997 respectively.

The first flight of the SpaceX Falcon 9 carrier rocket was scheduled to occur in November, but was delayed to February 2010 to allow more time for preparations.

The SpaceX Dragon, a commercial uncrewed logistics spacecraft which was developed as part of NASA's COTS programme, was also scheduled to make its first flight in 2009, however its launch has also slipped to 2010 as a result of knock-on delays.

The Kepler spacecraft, which was launched by a Delta II on 7 March, entered an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit from where it will search for exoplanets.

LRO entered selenocentric orbit and began a series of experiments, whilst LCROSS remained attached to the Centaur upper stage of the carrier rocket, and flew past the Moon.

After orbiting the Earth twice, LCROSS separated from the upper stage and both it and the Centaur impacted the Cabeus crater at the South Pole of the Moon, on 9 October.

Fobos-Grunt, a sample return mission to Mars' natural satellite Phobos, would have carried the first Chinese planetary probe, Yinghuo-1.

In February, Dawn passed within 549 kilometres (341 mi) of Mars, during a gravity assist manoeuvre for its journey to the asteroid belt.

Whilst the primary objective of the flyby, achieving a gravitational assist, was successful, the spacecraft entered safe mode shortly before its closest approach, which prevented it recording data as it flew away from the planet.

Although not a spaceflight in its own right, the Ares I-X test flight was conducted on 28 October, with the rocket lifting off from Launch Complex 39B of the Kennedy Space Center at 15:30 GMT.

On 24 February, a Taurus-XL launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, United States, with the Orbiting Carbon Observatory.

The launch was conducted on 5 April, and North Korea maintains that it successfully reached orbit, however no objects from the launch were tracked as having orbital velocity, and US radar systems tracking the rocket detected that it failed at around the time of third stage ignition, with debris falling in the Pacific Ocean.

The satellite was placed in a lower than planned orbit, which it was initially expected to be able to correct by means of its onboard propulsion system, and the launch was reported to be a partial failure.

[7] On 25 August, the Naro-1 rocket was launched on its maiden flight, however one half of the payload fairing failed to separate, and it did not reach orbit.

The United States National Space Science Data Center catalogued 123 spacecraft placed into orbit by launches which occurred in 2009.

It had also intended to launch the first Vega rocket, however this was delayed due to ongoing development issues, which had already left the project several years behind schedule.

Eight Delta II launches were also made, including its last mission with a GPS satellite, and its last flight with a payload for the United States armed forces.

[4] At the start of the year, a mockup Falcon 9 was erected on its launch pad at Canaveral, however the type's maiden flight slipped into 2010.