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.
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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.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
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!