The Weekly Rocket Report #26
05/12/2025-05/18/2025
Ricky Whitmore
Space Writer
Hello and happy Monday everyone! You know what that means, its time for The Weekly Rocket Report! We had a fairly busy week this week so let’s get straight into the action.
The week begins in China on Monday afternoon. A Long March 3C/E lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Center carrying TJSW-19 to orbit. The payload a classified satellite, reportedly used for communications testing, though its true function is unknown.
Monday evening was a California Starlink launch. Falcon 9 carried the 26 satellites of Starlink Group 15-4 to orbit. Following stage separation the booster returned to Earth, landing on the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You”.
Falcon 9 launches Starlink Group 15-4. Photo Credit: SpaceX.
A few hours later Starlink Group 6-83 was launched from the Cape. 28 Starlink satellites rode Falcon 9 to LEO, while the first stage returned to Earth, and landed on the drone ship “Just Read The Instructions”.
Jumping back to China, a Long March 2D carried 12 satellites to a Sun Synchronous orbit. These 12 satellites are part of a data processing constellation created by ADASPACE.
Long March 2D carries 12 Space Computing Satellites. Photo Credit: https://x.com/CNSpaceflight.
Continuing the pattern, we jump back to the US for 2 more Starlink missions. First, from the Cape, Falcon 9 launched Starlink Group 6-67. 28 satellites were propelled to orbit, and the first stage returned to Earth and landed on the drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas”.
The 4th Starlink mission of the week took place Friday morning, when Falcon 9 vaulted the 26 satellites of Starlink Group 15-5 to orbit. Following stage separation the rocket’s first stage came back down for a landing on the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You”.
Back to the other side of the Pacific, where we will stay for the remainder of the week. ZhuQue 2 completed its first mission of 2025, carrying 6 satellites to orbit. These satellites ranged from Earth observation satellites to tech demo satellites on behalf of various academic institutions.
ZhuQue-2 carries 6 Tianyi satellites. Photo Credit: Landspace.
A few hours after ZhuQue 2 was a launch from Rocket Lab. Electron carried a small SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite for iQPS, adding to the company’s existing constellation in a mission titled “The Sea God Sees”.
Electron launches “The Sea God Sees”. Photo Credit: Rocket Lab.
We end the week in India, where PSLV-XL also took its first flight of 2025. The rocket was carrying EOS-09, a radar imaging satellite. Unfortunately, the rocket experienced a critical failure in its 3rd stage, causing the rocket and its payload to be lost. This is only the 2nd failure of 2025 (4th if you count Starship test failures) and the first time PSLV has experienced failure since 2017.
PSLV-XL prior to the launch of EOS-09. Photo Credit: ISRO.
That is all the action for this week my friends. There was supposed to be a maiden launch from Gilmour Space’s Eris rocket, however the rocket experienced an issue on the pad that caused a fairing half to be separated, which will obviously delay the rocket’s first launch. Next week it looks we can expect a Russian Soyuz launch, as well as a return to flight for Kinetica 1, following a launch failure late last year. Whatever happens you can come back to read about it here, 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)