Two launches, from China and SpaceX
This post has been corrected, removing a launch by Rocket Lab. See comments here.
The global rocket industry completed two launches since yesterday. First, China yesterday placed two “hyperspectral” Earth observation satellites into orbit, its Smart Dragon-3 (also called Jielong-3) rocket lifting off from a launch platform off of China’s northeast coast.
The state-run article at the link provides unusually detailed information about the imaging capabilities of the satellites, saying that both are for land use observations, such as mining and agriculture.
Next, SpaceX in the early morning hours launched three Bluebird satellites for AST SpaceMobile, its Falcon 9 lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The two fairings completed their 18th and 32nd flights respectively. The first stage (B1077) completed its 30th flight (49 days after its previous mission), landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. This launch moved the booster into seventh place in the rankings for the most reused launch vehicle:
39 Discovery space shuttle (retired)
36 Falcon 9 booster B1067
35 Falcon 9 booster B1071
34 Falcon 9 booster B1063
33 Atlantis space shuttle (retired)
32 Falcon 9 booster B1069 (retired)
30 Falcon 9 booster B1077
29 Falcon 9 booster B1078
The launch increased AST Mobile’s constellation to 13 satellites. It needs to launch 45 to become operational, something it now hopes to achieve by early 2027, though the present grounding of both ULA’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rockets makes this difficult. SpaceX cannot pick up the slack.
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
94 SpaceX
52 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
10 Russia
For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 94 to 87.
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”Finally, Rocket Lab completed its eighth launch for the Japanese radar satellite company Q-Shu Pioneers (iQPS), its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand.”
Where are you seeing that the launch of QPS-SAR-13 occurred? Rocket Lab’s website still shows it as a scrub from last month. There’s a NOTAM in place for a similar launch tomorrow, but I see nothing for today.
Your link goes to a YouTube video of the QPS-SAR-12 launch last year.
“The launch increased AST Mobile’s constellation to 13 satellites.”
How are you counting 13? There are 12 operational Bluebirds on orbit and two prototype BlueWalkers (for a total of 14).
It appears I was badly fooled by bad information on https://www.rocketlaunch.live/, which showed this launch and video today, as if it was the actual launch when instead it was an apparently new feature (badly described) showing what happened “on this day” in the past.
I might stop using rocketlaunch.live entirely. It makes mistakes repeatedly, and now it created a situation where its information was easily misunderstood.
I will correct the post. Thank you.
Rocket Lab has now announced that the QPS-SAR-13 launch is scheduled for 5 am EDT tomorrow morning.
Yes. I also see that it has been posted at Space Launch Schedule (https://www.spacelaunchschedule.com/), but not at RocketLaunch.live. I am almost certainly going to stop relying on the latter.
An amazing attraction
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/YrZd7WaiUlY
Compare this to Japan’s shuttle craft like Yamato…a museum…that they removed…..sigh