SpaceX successfully completes the first launch in 2025
SpaceX tonight successfully launched a commercial communications satellite for the United Arab Emirates (UAE), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The first stage completed its 20th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairings completed their 16th and 19th flights respectively.
As this was the first launch in 2025, SpaceX is the only rocket company or nation on the leader board. This will not last long, as there are a lot of launches coming in the next few weeks, including the first launch attempt of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, the seventh test orbital launch of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy, the first launch of China’s Long March 8 rocket, a launch of India’s GSLV rocket, and a number of SpaceX Falcon 9 launches, including one that will send Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander on its way to the Moon.
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 tonight successfully launched a commercial communications satellite for the United Arab Emirates (UAE), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The first stage completed its 20th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairings completed their 16th and 19th flights respectively.
As this was the first launch in 2025, SpaceX is the only rocket company or nation on the leader board. This will not last long, as there are a lot of launches coming in the next few weeks, including the first launch attempt of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, the seventh test orbital launch of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy, the first launch of China’s Long March 8 rocket, a launch of India’s GSLV rocket, and a number of SpaceX Falcon 9 launches, including one that will send Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander on its way to the Moon.
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
The wild thing is, that this Falcon 9 launch is sending not just one lunar lander to the Moon, but two! Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 will be joined in the payload bay by iSpace’s Hakuto-R Mission 2 lander. Kind of wondering just what that will look like inside the fairing…
They will be taking different trajectories to the Moon, however. Blue Ghost will get there a lot sooner than Hakuto-R will.
(SpaceX is doing something similar a couple weeks after that, as the Falcon 9 launching Intuitive Machine’s next lander will be accompanied by some rideshares heading for lunar orbit, including NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer.)
Between CLPS and the Japanese, moon landers were already a low-single-digit percentage of SpaceX’s 2024 mission count. I suspect that percentage will grow in 2025 and going forward. And when Starship starts plying the Earth-Luna routes it’s going to be ‘Katie, bar the door.’ Given how hard SpaceX is pushing to expand Starship’s various envelopes – the multiple experiments to be conducted on IFT-7 being just the first of many we should see this year – we just might get a first taste of that before year’s-end. I’m already popping some corn.
Not sure of the credibility of this site, but, if true, the deployment if cargo from Starship is something to which I’ve been looking forward for a while.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/03/new-ship-new-year-spacex-to-deploy-model-starlink-satellites-on-next-starship-launch/
@Gary I start to wonder if SpaceX is going to suggest that early adopters, who want early access to Starship prices, build they satellites in the Starlink form factor and then can easily be launched when needed. That Chomper door may be harder than it seems. :)
Very clever and responsible of SpaceX to test the payload deployment functionality of Starship without risking real Starlink sats, and without leaving behind orbital junk!
My apologies to Bob as I just noticed he had mentioned the Starship cargo test in his links below.
Gary,
SpaceX is being forthcoming with its basic test plan for flight 7:
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-7
According to several of the space youtubers, there is at least a chance that SpaceX Starship and Blue Origin New Glenn could launch within a day of each other. We will see.
https://rocketlaunch.org/launch-schedule/blue-origin/new-glenn now has the launch at 1 am est on the 10th. It moved back two days today. I’m not sure what is going on with Blue Origin, but their communication is very poor…
Coming soon to an orbit near you…Star Glenn!
https://x.com/kenkirtland17/status/1876012337871912961?s=46&mx=2
January 10, 2025–right as Alabama gets a winters mix….rats!
Handy dandy Starship graphic.
https://x.com/VikranthJonna/status/1875820402536280156
I am hoping NG successfully launches soon. It would be great to have another provider in the mix. I really wonder what the fate of Vulcan will be considering all the issues in play. Vulcan has the Atlas vertical integration that NRO needs and SpaceX is rapidly closing this gap.