The Weekly Rocket Report #35
07/14/2025-07/27/2025
Ricky Whitmore
Space Writer
Hello my friends, and welcome back to The Weekly Rocket Report. As promised, since I was on vacation last week I will be covering two weeks of launches in this article, so strap yourselves in.
Week 1 begins in China with the launch of Tianzhou 9, China’s Cargo resupply vessel for their Tiangong Space Station. The automated cargo craft rode a Long March 7 to the orbiting station.
Long March 7 launches Tianzhou 9. Image Credit: https://x.com/CNSpaceflight
Launch two for the week occurred when Falcon 9 blasted off carrying Starlink Group 15-2. The 26 satellites were successfully deployed and the rocket’s first stage returned to Earth, landing on the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You”.
Wednesday saw something interesting, another launch of Falcon 9, carrying internet satellites, though this time, they were not for Starlink. KF-01 lifted off from the Cape carrying the first of Falcon’s contracted launches for Amazon’s Project Kuiper. 24 Kuiper satellites were deployed successfully, and following staging the booster flew back to Earth, landing on the drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas”.
Falcon 9 launches KF-01. Photo Credit: SpaceX.
Friday it was back to business as usual for Falcon 9. Starlink Group 17-3 launched 24 satellites to LEO. Following stage separation, the rockets first stage returned to earth, landing on the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You”.
From there we move on to Week 2. Week 2 began with Falcon 9 launching O3b mPOWER 9 &10. O3b Networks, and their internet satellites have been regular customers on Falcon 9. Following stage separation, the 1st stage booster returned to Earth landing on the drone ship “Just Read The Instructions”.
Up next, from Vandenberg came the launch of TRACERS a pair of satellites built by NASA that will study magnetic reconnection. This mission also included a number of other payloads including Bard, Athena EPIC, REAL, Skykraft 4, and LIDE. Following stage separation the rocket’s booster returned back to the landing site, landing at LZ-4.
Moving over to Russia where Soyuz 2.1b launched Ionosfera-M 3 &4. This is the second, and final launch of a small constellation of Russian satellites for the Ionozond program, designed to study the upper atmosphere.
Soyuz 2.1b launches Ionosfera-M 3-4. Image Credit: Roscosmos.
Friday night saw the launch of CO3D & MicroCarb launched from French Guiana aboard Vega C. MicroCarb is designed to track carbon sources and carbon sinks in Earth’s atmosphere. The other payload, CO3D is a French constellation to 3D map Earth’s landmasses.
Vega-C launches CO3D & MicroCarb. Image Credit: ESA.
Now to the weekend, where we close out with more internet satellites, 3 launches of them. The first of these was Saturday, when Falcon 9 launched the 28 satellites of Starlink Group 10-26 to orbit. Following separation the first stage flew back down to the ocean, landing on the drone ship “A Shortfall Of Gravitas”.
Early Sunday morning, another Falcon 9 launched Starlink Group 17-2. The rocket’s first stage, following separation landed down range on the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You”, and the 24 satellites were deployed successfully.
The final launch of the week came from the Taiyuan launch center in China, where Long March 6A took off carrying SatNet LEO Group 5. This batch of 5 internet satellites was launched successfully to polar orbit, to join the ever increasing SatNet constellation.
There we have it everyone, the two week marathon of launches. Looking ahead at next week it is shaping up to be exciting, with launches from Hyperbola, a secret Electron from Wallops Island, GSLV, Kuaizhou, Falcon launching Crew 11, and the maiden launch of Eris. Hopefully all of these launches go off without a hitch and we will be back here to discuss them all next week 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)