Here’s a running tally of a few spaceflight statistics for the year.

So far, only one toilet has burned up in the atmosphere.  There are 245 new satellites in orbit, with 231 of those launched by 16 rockets.

By spaceport, here’s the breakdown of those rocket launches:

• USA: 5
• China: 3
• French Guiana: 2
• New Zealand: 1
• Russia: 1
• Japan: 1
• Kazakhstan: 1
• Iran: 1

Your useless space fact for the week comes from refsmmat, who shared that all payloads carried by the Space Shuttle had to be balanced by carrying lots of lead ballast into orbit and bringing it back again. That lead ballast served no other purpose.