SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites; China launches test internet satellite
SpaceX yesterday successfully placed 28 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Thank you from several readers for letting me know that I missed it. This was the company’s first of two launches yesterday, the second of which was the Fram2 manned mission. I was so focused on that I missed the first.
The first stage completed its seventeenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
China in turn today launched a satellite to test new technology for providing the internet from orbit, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in China’s northwest. Little information was released about the satellite, and no information was released about where the rocket’s lower stages — using very toxic hypergolic fuels — crashed inside China.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
37 SpaceX
17 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 37 to 30.
SpaceX yesterday successfully placed 28 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Thank you from several readers for letting me know that I missed it. This was the company’s first of two launches yesterday, the second of which was the Fram2 manned mission. I was so focused on that I missed the first.
The first stage completed its seventeenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
China in turn today launched a satellite to test new technology for providing the internet from orbit, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in China’s northwest. Little information was released about the satellite, and no information was released about where the rocket’s lower stages — using very toxic hypergolic fuels — crashed inside China.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
37 SpaceX
17 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 37 to 30.