Three launches since yesterday, with a fourth upcoming today [scrubbed]
The beat goes on: Since yesterday there were three launches globally, two by China and one by SpaceX, with a fourth launch scheduled by Blue Origin only a few hours hence. UPDATE: Blue Origin launch scrubbed due to weather].
First China’s solid-fueled Long March 11 rocket placed three classified military test satellites into orbit, lifting off from an ocean platform off China’s northeastern coast.
Next, China’s solid-fueled Kinetica-1 (Lijian-1) rocket placed two “technical satellites” into orbit, lifting off from the “commercial” launchpad at the Jiuquan spaceport in the country’s northwest. As is normal, China’s press provided no information about the satellites, nor where Kinetica-1’s lower stages crashed inside China. The rocket itself is supposedly commercial, but it is built by a government agency, the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Finally, in the early morning hours today SpaceX placed 29 more Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The first stage (B1069) completed its 28th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. With this launch this booster tied the space shuttle Columbia for the number of reuses by a launch vehicle. As the rankings for the most reused launch vehicles below show, SpaceX now has four boosters close to becoming the most reused rockets ever.
39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
31 Falcon 9 booster B1067
29 Falcon 9 booster B1071
29 Falcon 9 booster B1063
28 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
146 SpaceX (a new record)
69 China (a new record)
14 Rocket Lab
13 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 146 to 114.
Blue Origin hopes to launch two NASA smallsat Mars orbiters later today from Cape Canaveral, using its New Glenn rocket. That launch is scheduled for 2:35 pm (Eastern). The company will once again attempt to land the first stage on a platform in the Atlantic. I have embedded the live stream below.
UPDATE: Launch scrubbed due to weather. The negotiations with the FAA (see below) now take on greater importance.
This will be the second launch of New Glenn, eleven months after its maiden flight in January. As has been the company’s culture for the past decade, it has moved very slowly from that first launch to this second. This pace however must accelerate soon, as Blue Origin has a 27-launch contract with Amazon to launch part of its Kuiper satellites. Amazon only has 154 satellites in orbit, and needs to get about 1,600 in place by July 2016 to meet the requirements of its FCC license. It also has launch contracts with ULA (46 launches, three of which have been completed) and ArianeGroup’s Ariane-6 (18 launches), but neither can on their own launch enough to do the job.
One last note: For this launch, Blue Origin is trying to arrange an exemption from the FAA’s curfew on day launches that begins tomorrow, in case some issue causes a scrub today. No word as yet on whether the FAA will agree.
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 beat goes on: Since yesterday there were three launches globally, two by China and one by SpaceX, with a fourth launch scheduled by Blue Origin only a few hours hence. UPDATE: Blue Origin launch scrubbed due to weather].
First China’s solid-fueled Long March 11 rocket placed three classified military test satellites into orbit, lifting off from an ocean platform off China’s northeastern coast.
Next, China’s solid-fueled Kinetica-1 (Lijian-1) rocket placed two “technical satellites” into orbit, lifting off from the “commercial” launchpad at the Jiuquan spaceport in the country’s northwest. As is normal, China’s press provided no information about the satellites, nor where Kinetica-1’s lower stages crashed inside China. The rocket itself is supposedly commercial, but it is built by a government agency, the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Finally, in the early morning hours today SpaceX placed 29 more Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The first stage (B1069) completed its 28th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. With this launch this booster tied the space shuttle Columbia for the number of reuses by a launch vehicle. As the rankings for the most reused launch vehicles below show, SpaceX now has four boosters close to becoming the most reused rockets ever.
39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
31 Falcon 9 booster B1067
29 Falcon 9 booster B1071
29 Falcon 9 booster B1063
28 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
146 SpaceX (a new record)
69 China (a new record)
14 Rocket Lab
13 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 146 to 114.
Blue Origin hopes to launch two NASA smallsat Mars orbiters later today from Cape Canaveral, using its New Glenn rocket. That launch is scheduled for 2:35 pm (Eastern). The company will once again attempt to land the first stage on a platform in the Atlantic. I have embedded the live stream below.
UPDATE: Launch scrubbed due to weather. The negotiations with the FAA (see below) now take on greater importance.
This will be the second launch of New Glenn, eleven months after its maiden flight in January. As has been the company’s culture for the past decade, it has moved very slowly from that first launch to this second. This pace however must accelerate soon, as Blue Origin has a 27-launch contract with Amazon to launch part of its Kuiper satellites. Amazon only has 154 satellites in orbit, and needs to get about 1,600 in place by July 2016 to meet the requirements of its FCC license. It also has launch contracts with ULA (46 launches, three of which have been completed) and ArianeGroup’s Ariane-6 (18 launches), but neither can on their own launch enough to do the job.
One last note: For this launch, Blue Origin is trying to arrange an exemption from the FAA’s curfew on day launches that begins tomorrow, in case some issue causes a scrub today. No word as yet on whether the FAA will agree.
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
Wrong ocean anent the New Glenn landing.
Dick Eagelson: Thank you. The ocean is now fixed.
Blue Origin scrubs the mars escapade launch today. Press release blames future delays on Schumer shut down.
UPDATE for 4:20 p.m. EST: SCRUB! Blue Origin has called off today’s planned launch of the New Glenn NG-2 mission with NASA’s ESCAPADE Mars launch due to bad weather, specifically a thick cloud rule, the company said. While options to launch on Nov. 9 and Nov. 10 are available, Blue Origin will need special FAA approval due to new restrictions that take effect on Nov. 10, due to the government shutdown. This story will be updated with the next launch date once it is available.
According to nextspaceflight.com, the ESCAPADE launch is now re-scheduled for Wed. Nov. 12 at 2:50 PM Florida time. That definitely falls outside of the FAA’s new limitations so perhaps some sort of deal has, indeed, been reached.
I note that the next three Starlink launches, all from Florida, and ULA’s next try at launching the Viasat GEO bird that has already scrubbed twice, are now scheduled within FAA limits on their respective launch days. The Atlas V is scheduled to depart at exactly 10:00 PM and all three Starlinks at 10:01 PM Florida time. There are some Starlink missions a bit further out that have not been rescheduled to meet the FAA restrictions – at least not yet.
Rocket Lab has a sub-orbital Electron mission set to launch from Wallops on the 16th at 7:45 AM local time. Perhaps Wallops is sufficiently remote from major airports that the relatively infrequent launches from there don’t constitute an airspace clearance problem.
It might also be the case that Rocket Lab and SpaceX aren’t going to reschedule any launches that are a week or more distant unless it looks as though the government shutdown will drag on that much further. There’s been some loose talk about a possible resolution to the shutdown occurring next week.
Dick Eagleson: All of this is in flux for one more reason. There are stories out now that a deal has been struck ending the shutdown. If confirmed it will still take a several days for it to be approved by both houses but it passed it will end the FAA’s curfew.
One more, I was waiting for- liftoff at 02:41UTC November 10, Long March 12 Y3 launched SatNet LEO Group 13 from Hainan
https://x.com/CNSpaceflight/status/1987743771292000664
https://youtu.be/1awg-2BzWF0?si=XcaHPAJ26NgNs6u-
This is not the reusuable model, that is the Long March 12A
”Rocket Lab has a sub-orbital Electron mission set to launch from Wallops on the 16th at 7:45 AM local time.”
As I said before, Rocket Lab is launching under DoD authority. It is not a commercial launch. Neither is Sentinel 6B.
WILL ISSUE NOTAMS FOR FOOD
mkent,
Good point. The ESCAPADE launch won’t be commercial either so perhaps that also explains its scheduling.
Jeff Wright,
Heh.
It may be a moot point now, since it seems there may be a deal on the Hill to end the shutdown now…
As I understand it, government payload launches are *not* automatically exempt from the FAA curfew. They *can* be, but it has to be applied for to the FAA; it sounds like it’s done on a case-by-case basis. Meanwhile, neither the FAA or Blue Origin has explained this explicitly in public, the BO post on X says: “We worked with the FAA and range to select a launch window from 2:50 PM – 4:17 PM EST / 19:50 – 21:17 UTC.” I am assuming they applied for a waiver on those grounds, and were granted it.
Maybe it didn’t hurt that the same guy (Sean Duffy) is ultimately in charge of both the payload (Escapade) and the regulating agency (the FAA).
”The ESCAPADE launch won’t be commercial either…”
Escapade is in a grey zone. The launch order was issued by NASA’s LSP, which would normally make it exempt, but under the VADR contract, which explicitly uses a commercial launch license. Thus it should really fall under the curfew, but the ultimate customer being NASA probably made a waiver easier to get. As others here have noted, the same guy is currently running both agencies.
Based on what I saw on the legacy networks and various places on-line, the end of the shutdown looks to be pretty much a done deal. Dems – excepting the eight Senators who were part of the deal to end it – seem incensed the shutdown is over. If there was any way for them to still monkeywrench things I wouldn’t think they’d be so publicly PO’ed.
Looking forward to space launch, at least, getting back to normal. SpaceX just launched its first – and perhaps, only – batch of Starlinks to fly under the shutdown-based restrictions.