Rocket Lab launches a set of technology test satellites for Space Force
Rocket Lab tonight successfully placed into orbit a set of Space Force technology test satellites dubbed DISKSat, its Electron rocket lifting off from Wallops Island in Virginia.
DISKSat is a new standard satellite design, shaped like a flat disk about a yard across and developed by the Aerospace Corporation. The idea is that these disk-shaped satellites will more efficiently fit payload into the standard cylindrical fairings used by rockets. This mission includes four that will be deployed in low Earth orbit, but during the mission will also test operation in much lower orbits than satellites normally fly. I suspect the flat design reduces the atmospheric drag at those low orbits, thus allowing the satellite to remain in orbit for longer time periods.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
168 SpaceX
84 China
17 Rocket Lab (a new record)
15 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 140.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Rocket Lab tonight successfully placed into orbit a set of Space Force technology test satellites dubbed DISKSat, its Electron rocket lifting off from Wallops Island in Virginia.
DISKSat is a new standard satellite design, shaped like a flat disk about a yard across and developed by the Aerospace Corporation. The idea is that these disk-shaped satellites will more efficiently fit payload into the standard cylindrical fairings used by rockets. This mission includes four that will be deployed in low Earth orbit, but during the mission will also test operation in much lower orbits than satellites normally fly. I suspect the flat design reduces the atmospheric drag at those low orbits, thus allowing the satellite to remain in orbit for longer time periods.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
168 SpaceX
84 China
17 Rocket Lab (a new record)
15 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 140.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
SpaceX will apparently call the month of Dec. and the year 2025 a wrap after three more F9 launches which should see our host’s annual tally for it reach 171, four of which were Starships.
Russia and Rocket Lab each have a truly preposterous number of missions with notional 2025 launch dates left on their dance cards, only a few of which are actually likely to be launched. I have to favor Rocket Lab for the bronze this year, topping Russia.
There are also a bewildering variety of PRC launches notionally scheduled for sometime in the remaining two weeks of 2025. The odds of any particular one of them going off is hard to figure as is the likely total for the year, but I don’t think this is the year for the PRC to post a triple-digit number.
That new Aerospace Corp. satellite form factor should really be called Pizza-sat rather than DISKSat – the buses are round, flat and can have any of a huge variety of payload toppings.
How many Starship missions are we counting. None completed a full orbit, and there were varying definitions of success.
“Pizza-sat”, is it OK to have pineapple on a Pizza-sat?
Aussie Dave: No.
Aussie Dave,
What Blair said.
sippin_bourbon,
Our host counted four of the Starship launches this year as successes. I think he was a wee bit over-generous in one case.
Dick Eagleson noted: “Our host counted four of the Starship launches this year as successes. I think he was a wee bit over-generous in one case.”
Considering all of the launches provided important information that SpaceX is applying to future builds, and considering that learning these lessons is the purpose of these developmental launches, I think all of them are successes.
On the other hand, if someone is counting only launches with payloads delivered to space as a success, then none of the launches (including the Starship landing tests four or five years ago) were a success.
So, yes, “varying definitions of success.“
Edward,
I would call a mission a success if it achieved all of its minimum goals. Starship flights 7, 8 and 9 were failures by this standard, but flights 10 and 11 were successes. Both of these latter flights delivered payloads – Starlink V3 simulators – to space. Not to orbit, but to space. Neither mission had achieving orbit as a minimum goal.
Our host also counted Flight 9 as a success, perhaps because it featured the first successful reuse of a Super Heavy booster.
Prior to doing a bit of looking up on this issue, my own recollection had been that flight 6 was also a 2025 flight but it was actually the last test flight of 2024. So only five Starship test flights this year. But our host’s SpaceX launch total seems to differ from SpaceX’s Falcon total by four and not just three. Not sure why that is. Have too much else to do to look into that immediately.
All: I readily admit that my decision to count those Starship launches was purely a personal one, and certainly open to disagreement. In fact, as Dick Eagleson knows when we discussed this previously, I am not even sure of my own criteria. Generally I don’t count suborbital launches, but it seemed to me that would be ridiculous in the case of Starship/Superheavy, as they aren’t intended for suborbital and are only flying that low for safety reasons. Everyone of those launches could have attempted an orbital orbit.
Still, it could be argued that I shouldn’t count the ones where Starship broke up just before its coast phase. It appears that I did count them, and since there are good reasons to do so (these are engineering test flights where everything that happens is of value), I am not going change anything at this point.
I don’t think it matters much, considering the overall numbers put up by SpaceX. Include them or not, it won’t change the company’s utter domination in 2025.
Success: I know it when I see it.
Robert Zimmerman wrote: “Generally I don’t count suborbital launches …”
It really can be difficult to know what to count and what not to count. I would say that as long as you are consistent …, but didn’t someone say that consistency is the hobgoblin of the mind?
Come to think of it, I seem to recall that the quote meant that if you remain consistent then you aren’t really thinking about the topic. Hmm, something about that doesn’t sound right.
My point is: as long as you explain your reasoning, then it seems to me that the way you do something is probably reasonable — or at least reasoned, if only in some way that makes sense only to yourself.
You know, I really thought this was going to be a profound and well-reasoned comment, when I started, but — man! — this inconsistency is a real hobgoblin haunting my mind. Maybe if I go back to bed, get some more sleep, and restart the day, then things will seem better. Or, maybe it is just that the coffee has not yet kicked in.
So the reasoning that I intended to express was: Gagarin’s world record didn’t meet aviation’s requirements for setting world records. Aviation required that the pilot successfully land with his aircraft, so the Soviets “forgot” to mention that Gagarin ejected from his spacecraft before crashdown, because they had yet to figure out how to safely land the capsule with someone inside. Does that make him not the first person to orbit the Earth? Few people argue that, and I sometimes hear people mention that he didn’t actually go all the way around, having landed west of his launch site. That argument can be rebutted, because the Earth rotated twenty or so degrees (around a thousand kilometers) while he was in orbit. I could go on about this, but despite being my primary thought on the topic, it is a distraction from the topic at hand.
What is success?
We may know it when we see it, but another way to know it — at least for developmental testing — is when it meets all the previously announced goals, which is to say that it fulfills the test plan, whether or not the individual tests pass. For example, an automobile designer may crash-test his car design, and as long as it hits the brick wall the intended way, whether it smashed up as intended or he has to redesign the crush-zone (or seatbelts, or airbag, or whatever), his test taught him something useful. Another example, the first Starship integrated launch test, Elon Musk said that he would consider a success if it got off the pad without blowing up the pad (which they were calling “stage zero,” at the time). So Starship made it all the way to the staging phase before it finally was unable to continue, so that sounds like success. On the other hand, the flame diverter under the pad was destroyed, so maybe it didn’t really meet Musk’s previously stated definition of success.
For verification testing (testing after assembly and prior to shipment for the next-level assembly or for operational launch), success would be that the unit worked as designed, or maybe I should say: as intended. For example, we may not know what failed, but something major seems to have gone wrong during Dream Chaser’s environmental verification testing, explaining why it has no scheduled launch date. And is no longer under NASA contract.
To finish my point: Robert may seem to be or actually be inconsistent, listing suborbital flights as orbital flights, but the Starships are reaching orbital velocity in orbits that intentionally intersect the atmosphere for reentry for safety reasons. If something goes wrong with the test (how likely is that?) no junk is left in space, even if in a very temporary, low orbit. For Robert, that seems to count. For others, it does not, so we can find other orbital lists for the year that do not contain Starship launches.
Does it really matter? Did Gagarin’s ejection seat really matter?