The Weekly Rocket Report #25
05/05/2025-05/11/2025
Ricky Whitmore
Space Writer
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Weekly Rocket Report. We come back today to report on what was a relatively mundane week of launches last week. Nonetheless I am here to break it down.
The first launch of the week was Starlink Group 6-93 from the Cape Tuesday night. Falcon 9 carried 28 starlink satellites to orbit successfully, and its first stage booster landed back down range on the drone ship “Just Read The Instructions”.
The next launch was Friday evening, another Starlink mission. Falcon 9 carried the 26 satellites of Starlink Group 15-3 from the California coast, to low Earth orbit. Following stage separation the 1st stage returned to Earth, landing on the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You”.
Falcon 9 launches Starlink Group 15-3. Photo Credit: SpaceX.
Next on the list is, you guessed it, another Starlink mission. Back to the Cape early Saturday morning, the 28 satellites of Starlink Group 6-91 were vaulted to LEO by Falcon 9. Following its separation and re-entry burn the booster landed on the drone ship “A Shortfall Of Gravitas”. Also of note, this mission became the first time a Falcon Fairing half had been flown 30 times, a very impressive feat.
The final launch this week was… actually not a Starlink mission. Sunday morning a Long March 6A blasted off from the Taiyuan Space Center, launching Yaogan 40 Group 02 to orbit. 3 satellites were deployed which, according to the Chinese, are for electromagnetic environment probing.
That’s all the launches for this week my friends. Looking ahead, next week seems to be a fairly “boring” week of launches as well. More Starlink, more Long Marches. ZhuQue 2 does make another appearance next week, but I’m sure it won’t be live streamed. I see people talking about Starship a lot, but I have heard nothing official on a firm launch date, so I will wait for that before getting too hyped up. No matter what happens, I will be back here to next week to break down all the launches, on The Weekly Rocket Report.
As always feel free to write to me at rickyew2112@gmail.com, or find me on X @Rickyew2112
Sic Itur Ad Astra
(Thus They Journey to the Stars)